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THE AMATEUR INN 

ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE 



By 

ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE 


LOCHINVAR LUCK 

FURTHER ADVENTURES OF LAD 

buff: a collie 

THE AMATEUR INN 

black Caesar’s clan 

BLACK GOLD 

NEW YORK: 

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 




THE 

AMATEUR INN 

BY 

ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE 


NEW 



YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



COPYRIGHT, 1923, 

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 




* 




V 

A s\ 


/ 

f 

c 


THE AMATEUR INN. II 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

©C1A760GS3 

! 


NOV -I 1923 



CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 




PAGE 

I 

A NON-SKIPPABLE PROLOGUE 

• 

• 

• 

9 

II 

AT LAST THE STORY BEGINS 

• 

• 

• 

22 

in 

AN INVOLUNTARY LANDLORD 

• 

• 

• 

44 

IV 

TWO OR THREE INTRUDERS 

• 

• 

• 

56 

V 

ROBBER’S ROOST, UNINCORPORATED 

• 

75 

VI 

THE POLICE AND THE DUKE OF ARGYLE 

• 

90 

vn 

FAITH AND UNFAITH AND SOME 

MOON- 



LIGHT .... 

• 

• 

• 

103 

vm 

THE INQUISITION 

• 

• 

• 

112 

IX 

A LIE OR TWO . 

• 

• 

• 

125 

X 

A CRY IN THE NIGHT 

• 

• 

• 

140 

XI 

WHAT LAY BEYOND THE SMASHED 

DOOR 

• 

161 

XII 

WHEREIN CLIVE PLAYS THE 

FOOL 

• 

• 

175 

XIII 

HOW ONE OATH WAS TAKEN 

• 

• 

• 

192 

XIV 

A CLUELESS CLUE . 

• 

• 

• 

211 

XV 

THE IMPOSSIBLE 

• 

• 

• 

220 

XVI 

THE COLLIE TESTIFIES 

• 

• 

• 

231 

xvn 

UNTANGLING THE SNARL 

• 

• 

• 

243 

xvm 

WHEN HE CAME HOME . 

• 

• 

• 

257 

XIX 

A MAN AND A MAID AND ANOTHER 

MAN 

• 

283 





* 






















THE AMATEUR INN 




THE AMATEUR INN 


Chapter I 

A NON-SKIPABLE PROLOGUE 


O SMUN VAIL doesn’t come into this story 
at all. Yet he was responsible for every¬ 
thing that happened in it. 

He was responsible for the whistling cry in 
the night, and for the Thing that huddled 
among the fragrant boxtrees, and for the love of 
a man and a maid—or rather the loves of sev¬ 
eral men and a maid—and for the amazing and 
amusing and jewel-tangled dilemma wherein 
Thaxton was shoved. 

He was responsible for much; though he was 
actively to blame for nothing. Moreover he 
and his career were interesting. 

So he merits a word or two, if only to explain 
what happened before the rise of our story’s 
curtain. 

At this point, the boreful word, Prologue, 

should be writ large, with a space above and 

9 


10 The Amateur Inn 

below it, by way of warning. But that would 
be the sign to skip. And one cannot skip this 
short prologue without losing completely the 
tangled thread of the yarn which follows—a 
thread worth gripping and a yarn more or less 
worth telling. 

So let us dispose of the prologue, without call¬ 
ing it by its baleful name; and in a mere mouth¬ 
ful or two of words. Something like this: 

When Osmun Vail left his father’s Berkshire 
farm, at twenty-one, to seek his fortune in New 
York, he wore his $12 “freedom suit” and had a 
cash capital of $18, besides his railway ticket. 

Followed forty years of brow-sweat and 
brain-wrack and one of those careers whose 
semi-occasional real-life recurrence keeps the 
Success magazines out of the pure-fiction class. 

When Osmun Vail came back, at sixty-one, to 
the Berkshire farm that had been his father’s 
until the mortgage was foreclosed, he was worth 
something more than five million dollars. His 
life-battle had been fought and won. His tired 
soul yearned unspeakably for the peace and love¬ 
liness of the pleasant hill country where he had 
been born—the homeland he had half-forgotten 
and which had wholly forgotten him and his. 

Osmun recalled the prim village of Stock- 


A Non-Skipable Prologue 11 

bridge, the primmer town of Pittsfield, drowsing 
beneath South Mountain, the provincial scatter 
of old houses known as Lenox; the tumbled 
miles of mountain wilderness and the waste of 
lush farmland between and around them. 

At sixty-one he found Pittsfield a new city; 
and saw a Lenox and Stockbridge that had been 
discovered and renovated by beauty-lovers from 
the distant outside world. All that region was 
still in the youth of its golden development. 
But the wave had set in, and had set in strong. 

A bit dazzled and more than a little troubled 
by the transformation, Osmun Vail sought the 
farm of his birth and the nearby village of 
Aura. Here at least nothing had changed; ex¬ 
cept that his father’s house—built by his grand¬ 
father’s own gnarled hands—had burned down; 
taking the rattle-trap red barns with it. The 
whole hilltop farm lay weedgrown, rank, deso¬ 
late. In the abomination of desolation, a de¬ 
serted New England farm can make Pompeii 
look like a hustling metropolis. There is some¬ 
thing awesome in its new deadness. 

Cold fingers seemed to catch Osmun by the 
throat and by the heartstrings; as he stared wist¬ 
fully from the house’s site, to the neglected 
acres his grandsire had cleared and his sire had 


12 The Amateur Inn 

loved. From the half-memory of a schoolday 
poem, the returned wanderer quoted chokingly: 

“Here will 1 pitch my tent . Here will I end 
my days” 

Then on the same principle of efficient 
promptitude which had lifted him from store- 
porter to a bank presidency, Osmun Vail pro¬ 
ceeded to realize a dream he had fostered 
through the bleakly busy decades of his exile. 

For a ridiculously low price he bought back 
and demortgaged the farm and the five hundred 
acres that bordered it. He turned loose a horde 
of landscape artists upon the domain. He sent 
overseas for two renowned British architects, 
and bade them build him a house on the hilltop 
that should be a glorious monument to his own 
success and to his father’s memory. To Boston 
and to New York he sent, for a legion of skilled 
laborers. And the estate of Vailholme was 
under way. 

Fashion, wealth, modernity, had skirted this 
stretch of rolling valley to northeast of Stock- 
bridge and to south of Lenox. The straggly 
one-street village of Aura drowsed beneath its 
giant elms; as it had drowsed since a quarter- 
century after the Pequot wars. The splashing 
invasion of this moneyed New Yorker created 


A Non-Skipable Prologue 13 

more neighborhood excitement than would the 
visit of a Martian to Brooklyn. 

Excitement and native hostility to outsiders 
narrowed down to a very keen and very personal 
hatred of Osmun Vail; when it was learned that 
all his skilled labor and all his building material 
had been imported from points beyond the soft 
green mountain walls which hedge Aura Valley. 

Now there was not a soul in the Valley capa¬ 
ble of building any edifice more imposing or 
imaginative than a two-story frame house. 
There was no finished material in the Valley 
worth working into the structure of such a 
mansion as Osmun proposed. But this made 
no difference. An outlander had come back to 
crow over his poor stay-at-home neighbors, and 
he was spending his money on outside help and 
goods, to the detriment of the natives. That 
was quite enough. The tide of icy New Eng¬ 
land hate swelled from end to end of the Valley; 
and it refused to ebb. 

These Aura folk were Americans of Puritan 
stock—a race to whom sabotage and arson are 
foreign. Thus they did not seek to destroy or 
even to hamper the work at Vailholme. But 
their aloofness was made as bitter and blighting 
as a Bible prophet’s curse. For example: 


14 The Amateur Inn 

When his great house was but half built, 
Osmun ran up from New York, one gray Jan¬ 
uary Saturday afternoon, to inspect the job. 
This he did every few weeks. And, on his tours, 
he made headquarters at Plum’s, in Stockbridge, 
six miles away. This was an ancient and honor¬ 
able hostelry which some newfangled folk were 
even then beginning to call “The Red Lion Inn,” 
and whose food was one of Life’s Compensa¬ 
tions. Thence, on a livery nag, Vail was wont 
to ride out to his estate. 

On this January trip Osmun found that 
Plum’s had closed, at Christmas, for the season. 
He drove on to Aura, only to find the village’s 
one inn was shut for repairs. Planning to con¬ 
tinue his quest of lodgings as far as Lenox or, if 
necessary, to Pittsfield, Osmun went up, through 
a snowstorm, to his uncompleted hilltop man¬ 
sion of Vailholme. 

He had brought along a lunch, annexed from 
the Stockbridge bakery. So interested did he 
become in wandering from one unceilinged 
room to another, and furnishing and refurnish¬ 
ing them in his mind, that he did not notice the 
steady increase of the snowfall and of the wind 
which whipped it into fury. 

By the time he went around to the shed, at 


A Non-Skipable Prologue 15 

the rear of the house, where he had stabled the 
livery horse, he could scarce see his hand before 
his face. The gale was hurling the tons of snow 
from end to end of the Valley, in solid masses. 
There was no question of holding the road or 
even of finding it. The horse knew that—and 
he snorted, and jerked back on the bit when 
Osmun essayed to lead him from shelter 
Every minute, the blizzard increased. 

The corps of indoor laborers and their bosses 
had gone to their Pittsfield quarters, for Sun¬ 
day. Osmun had the deserted place to himself. 
Swathed in his greatcoat and in a mountain of 
burlap, and burrowing info a bed of torn papers 
and paint-blotched wall-cloths, he made shift 
to pass a right miserable night. 

By dawn the snowfall had ceased. But so 
had the Valley’s means of entrance and of exit. 
The two roads leading from it to the outer 
world were choked breast high with solid drifts. 
For at least three days there could be no ingress 
or egress. Aura bore this isolation, philosophi¬ 
cally. To be snowbound and cut off from the 
rest of the universe was no novelty to the Val¬ 
ley hamlet. Osmun bore it less calmly. 

By dint of much skill and more persuasion, 
he piloted his floundering horse down the hill 


16 The Amateur Inn 

and into the village. There, at the first house, 
he demanded food and shelter. He received 
neither. Neither the offer of much money nor 
an appeal to common humanity availed. It took 
him less than an hour to discover that Aura was 
unanimous in its mode of paying him back for 
his slight to its laborers. Not a house would 
take him in. Not a villager would sell him a 
meal or so much as feed his horse. 

Raging impotently, Osmun rode back to his 
frigid and draughty hilltop mansion-shell. 
By the time he had been shivering there for 
an hour a thin little man stumped up the 
steps. 

The newcomer introduced himself as Malcolm 
Creede. He had stopped for a few minutes in 
Aura, that morning, for provisions, and had 
heard the gleeful accounts of the villagers as 
to their treatment of the stuck-up millionaire. 
Wherefore, Creede had climbed the hill, in order 
to offer the scanty hospitality of his own farm¬ 
house to Osmun, until such time as the roads 
from the Valley should be open. 

Osmun greeted the offer with a delight born 
of chill and starvation. Leading his horse, he 
followed Creede across a trackless half-mile or 
so to a farm that nestled barrenly in a cup of 


A Non-Skipable Prologue 17 

the hills. During the plungingly arduous walk 
he learned something of his host. 

Creede was a Scotchman, who had begun life 
as a schoolmaster; and who had come to 
America, with his invalid wife, to better his for¬ 
tunes. A final twist of fate had stranded the 
couple on this Berkshire farm. Here, six 
months earlier, the wife had died, leaving her 
heart-crushed husband with twin sons a few 
months old. Here, ever since, the widower had 
eked out a pitifully bare living; and had cared, 
as best he might, for his helpless baby boys. 
His meager homestead, by the way, had glee¬ 
fully been named by luckier and more witty 
neighbors, “Rackrent Farm.” The name had 
stuck. 

Before the end of Osmun VaiPs enforced stay 
at Rackrent Farm, gratitude to his host had 
merged into genuine friendship. The two lonely 
men took to each other, as only solitaries with 
similar tastes can hope to. Osmun guessed, 
though Creede denied it, that the Good Samari¬ 
tan deed of shelter must rouse neighborhood 
animosity against the Scotchman. 

Osmun guessed, and with equal correctness, 
that this silent and broken Scot would be bit¬ 
terly offended at any offer of money payment 


18 The Amateur Inn 

• for his hospitality. And Vail set his own inge¬ 
nuity to work for means of rewarding the kind¬ 
ness. 

As a result, within six months Malcolm 
Creede was installed as manager (“factor,” 
Creede called it) of the huge new Berkshire 
estate of Vailholme and was supervising work 
on a big new house built for him by Osmun in 
a corner of the estate. 

Creede was woefully ignorant of business 
matters. Coming into a small inheritance from 
a Scotch uncle, he turned the pittance over to 
Vail for investment. And he was merely de¬ 
lighted—in no way suspicious—when the invest¬ 
ments brought him in an income of preposterous 
size. Osmun Vail never did things by halves. 

Deeply grateful, Creede threw his energy 
and boundless enthusiasm into his new duties. 
He went further. One of his twin sons he chris¬ 
tened “Clive” for the inheritance-leaving uncle 
in Scotland. But the other he named “Osmun,” 
in honor of his benefactor. Vail, much grati¬ 
fied at the compliment, insisted on taking over 
the education of both lads. The childless 
bachelor reveled in his role of fairy godfather 
to them. 

But there was another result of Osmun Vail’s 



A Non-Skipable Prologue 19 

chilly vigil in the half-finished hilltop mansion. 
During the hour before Creede had come to his 
rescue the cold and hungry multimillionaire had 
taken a vow as solemn as it was fantastic. 

He swore he would set aside not less than ten 
of his house’s forty-three rooms for the use of 
any possible wayfarers who might be stranded, 
as he had been, in that inhospitable wilderness, 
and who could afford to pay for decent accom¬ 
modations. Not tramps or beggars, but folk 
who, like himself, might come that way with 
means for buying food and shelter, and to 
whom such food and shelter might elsewhere 
be denied. 

This oath he talked over with Creede. The 
visionary Scot could see nothing ridiculous 
about it. Accordingly, ten good rooms were al¬ 
lotted mentally to paying guests, and a clause in 
Vail’s will demanded that his heirs maintain 
such rooms, if necessary, for the same purpose. 
The fact was not advertised. And during Os- 
mun’s quarter-century occupancy of Vailholme 
nobody took advantage of the chance. 

During that quarter-century the wilderness’s 
beauty attracted more and more people of means 
and of taste. Once-bleak hills blossomed into 
estates. The village of Aura became something 


20 The Amateur Inn 

of a resort. The face of the whole countryside 
changed. 

When Osmun Vail died (see, we are through 
with him already, though not so much as 
launched on the queer effects of his queerer ac¬ 
tions!) he bequeathed to his beloved crony, 
Malcolm Creede, the sum of $500,000, and a 
free gift of the house he had built for him, and 
one hundred acres of land around it. 

Creede had named this big new home “Cano- 
bie,” in memory of his mother’s borderland 
birthplace. He still owned Rackrent Farm, two 
miles distant. He had taken pride, in off mo¬ 
ments, in improving the sorry old farmhouse 
and bare acres into something of the quaint 
well-being which he and his dead wife had once 
planned for their wilderness home. Within a 
year after Vail’s death Creede also died, leav¬ 
ing his fortune and his two homes, jointly, to his 
twin sons, Clive and Osmun. 

The bulk of Vail’s fortune—a matter of 
$4,000,000 and the estate of Vailholme—went 
to the testator’s sole living relative; his grand¬ 
nephew, young Thaxton Vail, a popular and 
easy-going chap who, for years, had made his 
home with his great-uncle. 

Along with Vailholme, naturally, went the 


A Non-Skipable Prologue 21 

proviso that ten of its forty-three rooms should 
be set aside, if necessary, for hotel accommoda¬ 
tions. 

Thaxton Vail nodded reminiscently, as he 
read this clause in the will. Long since, Osmun 
had explained its origin to him. The young fel¬ 
low had promised, in tolerant affection for the 
oldster, to respect the whim. As nobody ever 
yet had taken advantage of the hotel proposition 
and as not six people, then alive, had heard of it, 
he felt safe enough in accepting the odd condi¬ 
tion along with the gift. 


Chapter II 

AT LAST THE STORY BEGINS 

A MONG the two million Americans shoved 
. bodily into the maelstrom of the World 
War were Thaxton Vail and the Creede twins. 

This story opens in the spring of 1919, when 
all three had returned from overseas service. 

Aura and the summer-colony were heartily 
glad to have Thaxton Vail back again. He was 
the sort of youth who is liked very much by 
nine acquaintances in ten and disliked by fewer 
than one in ninety. But there was no such ma¬ 
jority opinion as to the return of the two young 
Creedes. 

The twins, from babyhood, had been so alike 
in looks and in outward mannerisms that not 
five per cent of their neighbors could tell them 
apart. But there all resemblance ceased. 

Clive Creed was of the same general type as 
young Vail, who was his lifelong chum. They 
were much alike in traits and in tastes. They 
even shared—that last year before the war cut 

a hole in the routine of their pleasant lives—a 

22 


At Last the Story Begins 23 

mutual ardor for Doris Lane, who, with her old 
aunt, Miss Gregg, spent her summers at Storm- 
crest, across the valley from Vailholme. It was 
the first shadow of rivalry in their chumship. 

Clive and Thaxton had the same pleasantly 
easygoing ways, the same unforced likableness. 
They were as popular as any men in the hill- 
country’s big summer colony. Their wartime 
absence had been a theme for genuine regret to 
Aura Valley. 

Except in looks, Osmun Creede was as unlike 
his twin brother as any one could well have 
been. The man had every Scotch flaw and 
crotchet, without a single Scotch virtue. Old 
Osmun Vail had sized up the lad’s character 
years earlier, when he had said in confidence to 
Thaxton: 

“There’s a white man and a cur in all of us, 
Thax. And some psychologist sharps say twins 
are really one person with two bodies. Clive 
got all the White Man part of that ‘one person, 3 
and my lamentable namesake got all the Cur. 
At times I find myself wishing he were ‘the 
lamented Osmun Creede,’ instead of only ‘the 
lamentable Osmun Creede.’ Hester Gregg says 
he behaves as if Edgar Allan Poe had written 
him and Berlioz had set him to music.” 


24 The Amateur Inn 

From childhood, Thaxton and this Creede 
twin had clashed. In the honest days of boy¬ 
hood they had taken no pains to mask their 
dislike. In the more civil years of adolescence 
they had been at much pains to be courteous to 
each other when they met, but they tried not 
to meet. This avoidance was not easy; in such 
a close corporation as the Aura set, especially 
after both of them began calling over-often on 
Doris Lane. 

Back to the Berkshires, from overseas, came 
the two Creedes. The community prepared to 
welcome Clive with open arms; and to tolerate 
Osmun, as of old, for the sake of his brother and 
for the loved memory of his father. At once 
Aura was relieved of one of its former perplexi¬ 
ties. For no longer were the twins impossible 
to tell apart. 

They still bore the most amazing likeness to 
each other, of course. But a long siege of 
trench fever had left Osmun slightly bald on the 
forehead and had put lines and hollows in his 
good-looking face and had given his wide shoul¬ 
ders a marked stoop. Also, a fragment of shell 
in the leg had left him with a slight limp. The 
fever, too, had weakened his eyes; and had 
forced him to adopt spectacles with a faintly 


At Last the Story Begins 25 

smoked tinge to their lenses. Altogether, he 
was plainly discernible, now, from his erect 
brother, and looked nine years older. 

There was another change, too, in the breth¬ 
ren. Hitherto they had lived together at 
Canobie. On their return from the war they 
astonished Aura by separating. Osmun lived 
on at the big house. But Clive took his belong¬ 
ings to Rackrent Farm; and set up housekeep¬ 
ing there; attended by an old negro and his wife, 
who had worked for his father. He even trans¬ 
ported thither the amateur laboratory where¬ 
with he and Osmun had always delighted to put¬ 
ter; and he set it up in a vacant back room of 
the farmhouse. 

Aura was thrilled at these signs of discord in 
the hitherto inseparable brethren. Clive had 
been the only mortal to find good in Osmun and 
to care for his society. Now, apparently, there 
had been a break. 

But almost at once Aura found there had 
been no break. The twins were as devoted as 
ever, despite their decision to live two miles 
apart. They were back and forth, daily, at each 
other’s homes; and they wrought, side by side, 
with all their old zeal, in the laboratory. 

Osmun’s cantankerous soul did not seem to 


26 


The Amateur Inn 


have undergone any purifying process from war 
experience and long illness. -Within a month 
after he came back to Aura he proceeded to cele¬ 
brate his return by raising the rents of the seven 
cottages he and Clive owned; and by a twenty 
per cent cut in the pay of the Canobie laborers. 

Aura is not feudal Europe. Nor had Osmun 
Creede any of the hereditary popularity or mas¬ 
terliness of a feudal baron. Wherefore the seven 
tenants prepared to walk out of their rent-raised 
homes. The Canobie laborers, to a man, went 
on strike. Aura applauded. Osmun sulked. 

Clive came to the rescue, as ever he had done 
when his brother’s actions had aroused ill-feel¬ 
ing. He rode over to Canobie and was closeted 
for three hours with Osmun. Servants, passing 
the library, heard and reported the hum of argu¬ 
ing voices. Then Clive came out and rode home. 
Next morning Osmun lowered the rents and re¬ 
stored wages to their old scale. As usual, the 
resultant popularity descended on Clive and not 
upon himself. 

It was a week afterward that Thaxton Vail 
chanced to meet Osmun at the Aura Country 
Club. Osmun stumped up to him, as Vail sat 
on the veranda rail waiting for Doris Lane to 
come to the tennis courts. 


At Last the Story Begins 27 

“I was blackballed, yesterday, by the Stock- 
bridge Hunt Club,” announced Creede, with no 
other salutation. 

“I’m sorry,” said Thaxton, politely. 

“I hear, on good authority, that it was you 
who blackballed me,” continued Osmun, his 
spectacled eyes glaring wrathfully on his neigh¬ 
bor. “And I’ve come to ask why you did it. In 
fact, I demand to know why.” 

“I’m disobedient, by nature,” said Thaxton, 
idly. “So if I had blackballed you, I’d proba¬ 
bly refuse to obey your ‘demand.’ But as it 
happened, I didn’t blackball you. I wasn’t even 
ht the Membership Committee’s meeting.” 

“I hear, on good authority, that you black¬ 
balled me,” insisted Osmun, his glare abating 
not at all. 

“And I tell you, on better authority, that I 
didn’t,” returned Thaxton with a lazy calm that 
irked the angry man all the more. 

“Then who did?” mouthed Osmun. “I’ve a 
right to know. I mean to get to the bottom of 
this. If a club, like the Stockbridge Hunt, black¬ 
balls a man of my standing, I’ll know why. 
I—” 

“I believe the proceedings of Membership 
Committee meetings are supposed to be confi- 


28 The Amateur Inn 

dential,” Thaxton suggested. “Why not take 
your medicine?” 

“I still believe it was you who blackballed 
me!” flamed Osmun. “I had it from—” 

“You have just had it from me that I didn’t,” 
interposed Thaxton, a thread of ice running 
through his pleasant voice. “Please let it go at 
that.” 

“You’re the only man around here who would 
have done such a thing,” urged Creede, his face 
reddening and his voice rising. “And I am go¬ 
ing to find out why. We’ll settle this, here and 
now. I—” 

Thaxton rose lazily from his perch on the 
rail. 

“If you’ve got to have it, then take it,” he 
said, facing Osmun. “I wasn’t at the meeting. 
But Willis Chase was. And I’ll tell you what he 
told me about it, if it will ease your mind. He 
said, when your name was voted on, the ballot- 
box looked as if it were full of Concord grapes. 
There wasn’t a single white ball dropped into 
the box. I’m sorry to—” 

“That’s a lie!” flamed Osmun. 

Thaxton Vail’s face lost all its habitual easy¬ 
going aspect. He took a forward step, his mus- 



At Last the Story Begins 29 

cles tensing. But before he could set in whiz¬ 
zing action the fist he had clenched, a slender 
little figure stepped, as though by chance, be¬ 
tween the two men. 

The interloper was a girl; wondrous graceful 
and dainty in her white sport suit. Her face 
was bronzed, beneath its crown of gold-red hair. 
Her brown eyes were as level and honest as a 
boy’s. 

“Aren’t you almost ready, Thax?” she asked. 
“I’ve been waiting, down at the courts, ever so 
long while you sat up here and gossiped. Good 
morning, Oz. Won’t you scurry around and 
find some one to make it ‘doubles’? Thax and 
I always quarrel when we play ‘singles.’ Avert 
strife, won’t you, by finding Greta Swalm, or 
some one, and joining us? Please do, Oz. 
We—” 

Osmun Creede made a sound such as might 
well be expected to emanate from a turkey whose 
tail feathers are pulled just as it starts to gobble. 
Glowering afresh at Vail, but without further 
effort at articulate speech, he turned and 
stumped away. 

Doris Lane watched him until his lean form 
was lost to view around the corner of the 


30 The Amateur Inn 

veranda. Then, wheeling on Thaxton, with a 
striking change from her light manner, she 
asked: 

“What was the matter? Just as I came out 
of the door I heard him tell you something or 
other was a lie. And I saw you start for him. 
I thought it was time to interrupt. It would be 
a matter for the Board of Governors, you know, 
here on the veranda, with every one looking on. 
What was the matter?” 

“Oh, he thought I blackballed him, for the 
Hunt Club,” explained Thaxton. “When, as a 
matter of fact, I seem to be about the only mem¬ 
ber who didn’t. I told him so, and he said I 
lied. I’m—I’m mighty glad you horned in when 
you did. It’s always a dread of mine that some 
day I’ll have to thrash that chap. And you’ve 
saved me from doing it—this time. It’d be a 
hideous bore. And then there’d be good old 
Clive to be made blue by it, you know. And 
besides, Uncle Oz and his dad were—” 

“I know,” she soothed. “I know. You won’t 
carry it any further, will you? Please don’t.” 

“I suppose not,” he answered. “But, really, 
after a man calls another a liar and—” 

“Oh, I suppose that means there’ll be one 
more neighborhood squabble,” she sighed, puck- 


At Last the Story Begins 31 

ering her low forehead in annoyance. “And two 
more people who won’t see each other when they 
meet. Isn’t it queer? We come out to the 
country for a good time. And we spend half 
that time starting feuds or stopping them. 
People can live next door to each other in a big 
city for a lifetime, and never squabble. Then 
the moment they get to the country—” 

“ ‘All Nature is strife,’ ” quoted Thaxton, 
“So I suppose when we get back to Nature we 
get back to strife. And speaking of strife, there 
was a girl who was going to let me beat her at 
tennis, this morning; instead of spending the 
day scolding me for being called a liar. Come 
along; before all the courts are taken. I want 
to forget that Oz Creede and I have got to cut 
each other, henceforth. Come along.” 

On the following morning, appeared a little 
“human interest” story, in the Pittsfield Advo¬ 
cate. One of those anecdotal newspaper yarns 
that are foredoomed to be “picked up” and 
copied, from one end of the continent to the 
other. Osmun Creede had written the story 
with some skill. And the editor had sent a re¬ 
porter to the courthouse to verify it, before 
daring to print it. 

The article told, in jocose fashion, of the 


32 


The Amateur Inn 


clause in old Osmun Vail’s will, requiring his 
greatnephew and heir to maintain Vailholme, at 
request, as a hotel. An editorial note added the 
information that a copy of the will had been 
read, at the courthouse, by an Advocate re¬ 
porter, as well as Thaxton Vail’s signed accept¬ 
ance of its conditions. 

It was Clive Creede who first called Thax¬ 
ton’s notice to the newspaper yarn. While 
young Vail was still loitering over his morning 
mail, Clive rode across from Rackrent Farm, 
bringing a copy of the Advocate . 

“I’m awfully sorry, old man,” he lamented, 
as Thaxton frowningly read and reread the brief 
article. “Awfully sorry and ashamed. I 
guessed who had done this, the minute I saw it. 
I phoned to Oz, and charged him with doing it. 
He didn’t deny it. Thought it was a grand joke. 
I explained to him that the story was dead and 
forgotten; and that now he had let you in for no 
end of ridicule and perhaps for a lot of bother, 
too. But he just chuckled. While I was still 
explaining, he hung up the receiver.” 

“He would,” said Thaxton, curtly. “He 
would.” 

“Say, Thax,” pleaded Clive, “don’t be too 
sore on him. He means all right. He just has 


At Last the Story Begins 33 

an unlucky genius for doing or saying the wrong 
thing. It isn’t his fault. He’s built that way. 

. And, honest, he’s a tremendously decent chap, 
at heart. Please don’t be riled by this news¬ 
paper squib. It can’t really hurt you.” 

The man was very evidently stirred by the af¬ 
fair; and was wistfully eager, as ever, to smooth 
over his brother’s delinquencies. Yet, annoyed 
by what he had just read, Thaxton did not 
hasten, as usual, to reassure his chum. 

“You’re right when you say he has ‘an un¬ 
lucky genius for saying the wrong thing,’ ” he 
admitted. “The last ‘wrong thing’ was what he 
said to me yesterday. He called me a liar.” 

“No! Oh, Lord, man, no!” 

“Before I could slug him or remember he was 
your brother, Doris Lane strolled in between 
us, and the war was off. You might warn him 
not to say that particular ‘wrong thing’ to me 
again, if you like. Because, next time, Doris 
might not be nearby enough to stave off the re¬ 
sults. And I’d hate, like blazes, to punch a 
brother of yours. Especially when he’s just get¬ 
ting on his feet after a sickness. But—” 

“I wish you’d punch me , instead!” declared 
Clive. “Gods, but I’m ashamed! I’ll give him 
the deuce for this. Won’t you—is there any use 


34 


The Amateur Inn 


asking you to overlook it—to accept my own 
apology for it—and not to let it break off your 
acquaintance with Oz? It’d make a mighty hit 
with me, Thax,” he ended, unhappily. “I think 
a lot of him. He—” 

Thaxton laughed, ruefully. 

“That’s the way it’s always been,” he grum¬ 
bled. “Whenever Oz does or says some un¬ 
speakably rotten thing, and just as he’s about to 
get in trouble for it, you always hop in and de¬ 
flect the lightning. You’ve been doing it ever 
since you were a kid. There, stop looking as if 
some one was going to cut off your breathing 
supply! It’s all right. I’ll forget the whole 
thing—so far as my actions towards Oz are con¬ 
cerned. Only, warn him not to do anything to 
make me remember it again. As for this mess 
he’s stirred up, in the Advocate , I can’t see what 
special effect it’ll have. Uncle Oz was too well 
loved, hereabouts, for it to make his memory 
ridiculous.” 

But, within the day, Thaxton learned of at 
least one “special effect” the news item was to 
have. At four o’clock that afternoon, he re¬ 
ceived a state visit from a little old lady whom 
he loved much for herself and more for her 



At Last the Story Begins 35 

niece. The visitor was Miss Hester Gregg, 
Doris’s aunt and adoptive mother. 

“Please say you’re glad to see me, Thax,” she 
greeted Vail. “And please say it, now. Because 
when you hear what I’ve come for, you’ll hate 
me. Not that I mind being hated, you know,” 
she added. “But you lack the brain to hate, in¬ 
telligently. You’d make a botch of it. And I 
like you too well to see you bungle. Now shall 
I tell you what I’ve come for?” 

“If you don’t,” he replied, solemnly, “I shall 
begin hating you for getting my curiosity all 
worked up, like this. Blaze away.” 

“In the first place,” she began, “you know all 
about our agonies, with the decorators, at 
Stormcrest. You’ve barked your shins over their 
miserable pails and paper-rolls, every time 
you’ve tried to lure Doris into a dark corner of 
our veranda. Well, I figured we could stay on, 
while they were plying their accursed trade. I 
thought we could retreat before them, from 
room to room; and at last slip around them and 
take up our abode in the rooms they had fin¬ 
ished, while they were working on the final ones. 
It was a pretty thought. But we can’t. We 
found that out, to-day. We’re like old Baldy 
Tod, up at Montgomery. He set out to paint 


36 The Amateur Inn 

his kitchen floor, and he painted himself into a 
corner. We’re decorated into a corner. We’ve 
got to get out, Doris and I, for at least a week; 
while they finish the house. We’ve nowhere to 
live. Be it never so jumbled there’s no place at 
home—” 

“But—” 

“We drove over to Stockbridge, to-day, to see 
if we could get rooms in either of the hotels. 
(We’ll have to be near here; so I can oversee 
the miserable activities of the decorators, every 
day.) No use. Both hotels disgustingly full 
of tourists. The return of all you A. E. F. men 
and the post-war rush of cash-to-the-pocket- 
book have jammed every summer resort on 
earth. We tried at Lenox and Lee and we even 
went over to Pittsfield. The same everywhere. 
Not an inn or a hotel with a room vacant. 
Then—” 

“Hooray!” exulted Vail. “Stop right there! 
I have the solution. You and Doris come over 
here! I’ve loads of room. And it’ll be ever so 
jolly to have you—both. Please come!” 

“My dear boy,” said the old lady, “that’s just 
what I’ve been leading up to for five minutes.” 

“Gorgeous! But when are you going to get 
to the part of your visit that’s due to make me 



At Last the Story Begins 37 

hate you? Thus far, you’ve been as welcome as 
double dividends on a non-taxable stock. When 
does the ‘hate’ part begin?” 

“It’s begun,” she said. “Now let me finish 
it. I saw the Advocate story, this morning. I’d 
almost forgotten that funny part of the will. 
But it gave me my idea. I spoke of it to Doris. 
She was horrified. And that confirmed my re¬ 
solve. Whenever modern young people are hor¬ 
rified at a thing, one may know that is the only 
wise and right thing to do.” 

“I don’t understand,” he said, crestfallen. 
“Doesn’t she want to come here? I hoped—” 

“Not the way Vm coming,” supplemented 
Miss Gregg. “I’m not coming to visit Vailholme 
as a guest. I’m coming here to board!” 

She paused to let him get the full effect of 
her words. He got them. And he registered 
his understanding by a snort of disdain. 

“Your great-uncle,” she resumed, defiantly, 
“put that clause in his will for the benefit of 
wayfarers up here who could pay and who 
couldn’t get any other accommodations. That 
fits my case precisely. So it’ll be great fun. 
Besides, I loathe visiting. And I really enjoy 
boarding. So I am coming here, for a week, 
with Doris. To board. Not as a guest. To 


38 The Amateur Inn 

board. So that’s settled. We will be here about 
eleven o’clock, to-morrow morning.” 

She gazed in placid triumph at the bewildered 
young man. 

“You’ll do nothing of the sort!” he sputtered. 
“You’re the oldest friends I’ve got—both of 
you are. And it’ll be great to have you stay 
here from now till the Tuesday after Eternity. 
But you’re not going to board. That’s plain 
idiocy.” 

“Thax,” she rebuked. “You are talking 
loudly and foolishly. We are coming to board 
with you. It’s all settled. I settled it, myself. 
So I know. We’re coming for a week. And our 
time will be our own, and we won’t feel under 
any civil obligations or have to be a bit nicer 
than we want to. It’s an ideal arrangement. 
And if the coffee is no better than it was, the 
last night we dined here, I warn you I shall 
speak very vehemently to you about it. Coffee 
making is as much an art as violin playing or 
administering a snub. It is not just a kitchen 
chore. We shall stay here,” she forestalled his 
gurgling protest, “under an act of Legislature of 
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The law 
demands that a landlord give us hotel accommo- 


At Last the Story Begins 39 

dations, until such time as we prove to be pests 
or forget to pay our bills. We—” 

“Bills!” stammered Thaxton. “Oh, murder!” 

“That brings me to the question of terms,” 
she resumed. “There will be Doris and myself 
and Clarice, my personal maid. (Clarice has 
the manners of a bolshevist and the morals of a 
medical student. But she has become a habit 
with me.) We shall want a suite of two bed¬ 
rooms and a sitting room and bath for Doris and 
myself. And we shall need some sort of room 
for Clarice. A cage will do, for her, at a pinch. 
I’ve been figuring what you ought to charge 
me; and I’ve decided that a fair price would 
be—” 

“So have I,” interrupted Thaxton, a glint of 
hope brightening his embarrassment. “IVe 
been figuring on it, too. On the price, I mean. 
Man and boy, IVe been thinking it over, for the 
best part of ten seconds. I am the landlord. 
And as such I have all sorts of rights, by law; 
including the right to fix prices. Likewise, I’m 
going to fix it. If you don’t like my rates, you 
can’t come here. That’s legal. Well, my dear 
Miss Gregg, on mature thought, I have decided 
to make special rates for you and your niece 



40 The Amateur Inn 

and Clarice. I shall let you have the suite you 
speak of, per week, with meals (and coffee, such 
as it is) for the sum of fifteen cents per day— 
five cents for each of you—or at the cut rate of 
one dollar weekly. Payable in advance. Those 
are my terms. Take them or leave them.” 

He beamed maliciously upon the old lady. 
To his surprise, she made instant and meek an¬ 
swer: 

“The terms are satisfactory. We’ll take the 
rooms for one week, with privilege of renewal. 
I don’t happen to have a dollar, in change, with 
me, at the moment. Will you accept a written 
order for one dollar; in payment of a week’s 
board in advance?” 

“As I know you so well,” he responded, de¬ 
liberating, “I think I may go so far as to do that. 
Of course, you realize, though, that if the order 
is not honored at the bank, I must request either 
cash payment or the return of your keys. That 
is our invariable rule. And now, may I trouble 
you for that order?” 

From her case Miss Gregg drew a visiting 
card and a chewed gold pencil. She scribbled, 
for a minute, on the card-back; then signed 
what she had written; and handed the card to 
Thaxton. He glanced amusedly at it; then his 


At Last the Story Begins 41 

face went idiotically blank. Once more, his lips 
working, he read the lines scribbled on the back 
of the card: 

“Curator of Numismatic Dept., Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, New York City:—Please de¬ 
liver to bearer (Mr. Thaxton Vail ) upon proper 
identification, the silver dollar, dated 1804, 
which I placed on exhibition at the Museum .— 
Hester Gregg.” 

“The 1804 dollar !” he gasped. “That’s a 
low-down trick to play on me!” 

“Why?” she asked, innocently. “It is worth 
at least its face value. In fact—as you may re¬ 
call—my father paid $2,700 for it. When I 
placed it on view at the Museum, the curator 
told me its present value is nearer $3,600. You 
see, there are only three of them, extant. So, 
since you really insist on $1 a week for our 
board, it may as well be paid with a dollar that 
is worth the—” 

“I surrender!” groaned Thaxton. 

“You’d have saved so much trouble—people 
always would save themselves so much trouble,” 
she sighed, plaintively, “by just letting me have 
my own way in the first place. Thaxton, I am 
going to pay you $200 a week, board. As sum¬ 
mer hotel rates go, now, it is a moderate price 



42 


The Amateur Inn 


for what we’re going to get. And I’ll see we 
get it. We’ll be here, luggage and all, at about 
eleven in the morning. And now suppose you 
ring for Horoson. I want to talk to her about 
all sorts of arrangements. You’d never under¬ 
stand. And you’d only be in the way, while 
we’re talking. So, run out to the car. I left 
Doris there. Run along.” 

Summoning his housekeeper,—who had also 
kept house for Osmun Vail,—Thaxton departed 
bewilderedly to the car where Doris was await¬ 
ing her aunt’s return. 

“Are you going to let us come here, Thax?” 
hailed the girl, eagerly. “I do hope so! I 
wanted, ever so much, to go in while Auntie was 
making her beautifully preposterous request. 
But she said I mustn’t. She said there might 
be a terrible scene; and that you might use 
language. She said she is too innocent to under¬ 
stand the lurid things you might say, if you lost 
your temper; but that I’m more sophisticated; 
and that it’d be bad for me. Was there a ‘ter¬ 
rible scene,’ Thax?” 

“Don’t call me ‘Thax!’ ” he admonished, icily. 
“It isn’t good form to shower familiar nick¬ 
names on your hotelkeeper. It gives him a no¬ 
tion he can be familiar or else that you’re trying 


i 


At Last the Story Begins 43 

to be familiar. It’s bad, either way. Call me 
‘Mine Host.’ And in moments of reproof, call 
me ‘Fellow.’ If only I can acquire a bald head 
and a red nose and a bay window (and a white 
apron to drape over it) I’ll be able to play the 
sorry role with no more discomfort than if I 
were having my backteeth pulled. In the mean¬ 
time, I’m as sore as a mashed thumb. What on 
earth possessed her to do such a thing?” 

“Why, she looks on it as a stroke of genius!” 
said Doris. “Any one can go visiting. But no 
one ever went boarding in this way, before. It’s 
just like Auntie. She’s ever so wonderful. She 
isn’t a bit like any one else. Aren’t you going to 
be at all glad to have us here?” 


Chapter III 

AN INVOLUNTARY LANDLORD 
HAXTON VAIL was eating a solitary 



X breakfast, next morning, when, wholly un¬ 
announced, a long and ecstatic youth burst in 
upon him. The intruder was Willis Chase, who 
had roomed with Thaxton at Williams and who 
still was his fairly close and most annoyingly 
irresponsible friend. 

“Grand!” yelled Chase, bearing down upon 
the breakfaster. “Grand and colossal! A taxi- 
bandit is dumping all my luggage on the ve¬ 
randa, and your poor sour-visaged butler is 
making awful sounds at him. I didn’t bring 
my man. I didn’t even bring my own car. I 
taxied over from the club, just as I was; the 
moment I read it. I knew you had plenty of 
cars here; and the hotel valet can look after me. 
I’m inured to roughing it. Isn’t it a spree?” 

“If you’ll stop running around the ceiling, 
and light somewhere, and speak the language of 
the country,” suggested the puzzled Thaxton, 
“perhaps I can make some guess what this is all 


44 


An Involuntary Landlord 45 

about. I take it you’re inviting yourself here 
for a visit. But what you mean by ‘the hotel 
valet’ is more than I—” 

“Don’t you grasp it?” demanded Chase, in 
amaze. “Haven’t you even read that thing? 
It was in one of the New York papers, at the 
club, this morning. A chap, there, said it was 
in the Advocate, yesterday. Your secret has 
exploded. All the cruel world knows of your 
shame. You run a hotel. You have to; or else 
you’d lose Vailholme. It’s all in the paper. In 
nice clear print. For everybody to read. And 
everybody’s reading it, ever so happily. I’m 
going to be your first guest. It all flashed on 
me, like—” 

“Then switch the flash off!” ordered Thaxton, 
impatiently. “This crazy thing seems to hit you 
as a grand joke. To me, it hasn’t a single re¬ 
deeming feature. Clear out!” 

“My worthy fellow,” reproved Chase, “you 
forget yourself. You run a hotel. Your hotel 
is not full. I demand a room here. I can pay. 
By law, you cannot refuse to take me in. If 
you do, I shall bring an attorney here to enforce 
my rights. And at the same time, I shall bring 
along ten or eleven or nineteen of the Hunt Club 
crowd, as fellow-guests; to liven things for the 



46 


The Amateur Inn 


rest of the summer. Now, Landlord, do I stay; 
or do I not?” 

Vail glowered on his ecstatically grinning 
friend, in sour abhorrence. Then he growled: 

“If I throw you out, it’d be just like you to 
bring along that howling crowd of outcasts; 
and all of you would camp here on me for the 
season. If you think it’s a joke, keep the joke 
to yourself. If you insist on butting in here, 
you can stay. Not because I want you. I don’t. 
But you’re equal to making things fifty times 
worse, if I turn you out. 

“I sure am,” assented Chase, much pleased 
by the compliment to his powers. “Maybe even 
seventy-eight times worse. And then some— 
et puis quelque, as we ten-lesson boulevardiers 
say. So here we are. Now, what can you do 
for me in the way of rooms, me good man? The 
best is none too good. I am accustomed to rare 
luxury in my own palatial home, and I expect 
magnificent accommodations here.” 

Thaxton’s grim mouth relaxed. 

“Very good,” he agreed. “Miss Gregg and 
Doris are due here, too, in an hour or so. They 
have picked out my best suite. But—” 

“They are? Glory be! I—” 

Thaxton proceeded: 



An Involuntary Landlord 47 

“As landlord, I have the right to put my guests 
in any sort of room I choose to; and to charge 
them what price I choose. If my guests don’t 
like that, they can get out. I have all manner 
of rooms, you know; from my own to the ma¬ 
genta. Do you remember the magenta room, by 
any chance?” 

“Do I?” snorted Chase, memory of acute 
misery making him drop momentarily his pose. 
“Do I? Didn’t I get that room wished on me, 
six years ago, when your uncle had the Christ¬ 
mas house party; and when I turned up at the 
last minute? I remember how the dear old 
chap apologized for sticking me in there. Every 
other inch of space was crowded. I swear I be¬ 
lieve that terrible room is the only uncom¬ 
fortable spot in this house of yours, Thax. I 
wonder you don’t have it turned into a store¬ 
room or something. Right over the kitchen; 
hot as Hades and too small to swing a cat in, 
and no decent ventilation. Why do you ask if 
I ‘remember’ it? Joan of Arc would be as likely 
to forget the stake. If you’re leading up to tell¬ 
ing me the room’s been walled in or—” 

“I’m not,” said Vail. “I’m leading up to tell¬ 
ing you that that’s the room I’m assigning to 
you. And the price, with board, will be one 


48 The Amateur Inn 

hundred dollars a day. Take it or leave it. 
As—” 

A howl from Chase interrupted him. 

“Take it or leave it,” placidly repeated Vail. 
“In reverse to the order named.” 

“You miserable Shylock!” stormed Chase. 
“And after I worked it all out so beautifully! 
Say, listen! Just to spite you and to take that 
smug look off your ugly face, I’m going to stay! 
Get that? I’m going to stay! One day, any¬ 
how. And I’ll take that hundred dollars out of 
your hide, somehow or other, while I’m here! 
Watch if I don’t. It— What you got there?” 
he broke off. 

Thaxton had pulled out an after-breakfast 
cigar and had felt in vain for the cigar-cutter 
which usually lodged in his cash pocket. Fail¬ 
ing to find it, he had fished forth a knife to cut 
the cigar-end. It was the sight of this knife 
which had caught the mercurial Chase’s interest. 
Thaxton handed it across the table for his 
friend’s inspection. 

“It’s a German officer’s army knife,” he ex¬ 
plained. “Clive Creede brought it home with 
him, from overseas, for me. There aren’t any 
more of them made. It weighs a quarter-pound 


An Involuntary Landlord 49 

or so, but it has every tool and appliance on 
earth tucked away, among its big blades. It’s 
the greatest sort of knife in the world for an 
outdoor man to carry, in the country.” 

Chase, with the curiosity of a monkey, was 
prying open blade after blade, then tool after 
tool, examining each in childlike admiration. 

“What’s this for?” he asked, presently, after 
closing a pair of folding scissors and a sailor’s 
needle; and laboriously picking open a long tri- 
angular-edged instrument at the back of the 
knife. “This blade, or whatever it is. It’s got a 
point like a needle. But it slopes back to a 
thick base. And its three edges are razor-sharp. 
What do you use it for?” 

“I don’t use it for anything,” replied Vail. 
“I don’t know just what it’s for. It’s some sort 
of punch, I suppose. To make graduated holes 
in girths or in puttee-straps or belts. Vicious 
looking blade, isn’t it? The knife’s a treasure, 
though. It—” 

“Say! About that magenta room, now! 
Blast you, can’t I—?” 

“Take it or get out! I hope you’ll get out. 
It—” 

A shadow, athwart the nearest long window. 


50 


The Amateur Inn 


made them turn around. Clive Creede was step¬ 
ping across the sill, into the room. He was pale 
and hollow-eyed; and seemed very sick. 

“Hello, old man!” Vail greeted him. “You 
came in, like a ghost. And you look like one, 
too. Was it a large night or—?” 

“It was,” answered Clive, hoarsely, as he 
turned from shaking hands with his host and 
with Chase. “A very large night. In fact 
it came close to being a size too large for me. 
I got to fooling with some new monoxide gas 
experiments in that laboratory of Oz’s and 
mine. No use going into details that’d bore 
you. But I struck a combination by accident 
that put me out.” 

“You look it. Why—?” 

“Oz happened to drop in. He found me on 
the lab floor; just about gone for good. He 
lugged me out of doors and worked over me for 
a couple of hours before he got me on my feet. 
The whole house,—the whole of Rackrent 
Farm, it seems to me,—smells of the rotten 
chemical stuff. I got out, this morning, before 
it could keel me over again. The smell will 
hang around there for days, I suppose. It—” 

“Why in blazes should a grown man waste 
time puttering around with silly messes of 


An Involuntary Landlord 51 

chemicals?” orated Chase, to the world at large. 
“At best, he can only discover a new combina¬ 
tion of smelly drugs. And at worst, he can be 
croaked by them. Not that research isn’t a 
grand thing, in its way,” he added. “I used to 
do a bit of it, myself. For instance, last month, 
I discovered one miraculously fine combination, 
I remember: A hooker of any of the Seven 
Deadly Gins, and one— No, that’s wrong! 
Two parts Jersey applejack to one part 
French—” 

He broke off in his bibulous reminiscences, 
finding he was not listened to. Thaxton solic¬ 
itously had helped Clive to a chair and was 
pouring him a cup of black coffee. The visitor 
appeared to be on the verge of serious collapse. 

“Did Doc Lawton think it was all right for 
you to leave the house while you’re so done up?” 
asked Vail. 

“I didn’t send for him. Oz pulled me 
through,” returned Clive, dully. “Then I piked 
over here. I couldn’t stay there, in that horribly 
smelly place, could I?” 

He shuddered, in reminiscence, and gulped 
his coffee. 

“It’ll be days before the place is fit to live in 
again,” he said. “The gases have permeated—” 



52 


The Amateur Inn 

“I’d swap the magenta room for it, any time,” 
put in Chase, unheeded. 

Clive continued: 

“Oz brought me as far as your door, in his 
runabout. He had an idea he wouldn’t be over¬ 
welcome here, so he went on. He wanted me to 
stay at Canobie, with him, till I can go back 
home. But— Well, when I’m as knocked out 
as this, I don’t want to. Oz is all right. He’s a 
dandy brother, and a white pal. But he has 
no way with the sick. He—” 

“I know,” said Thaxton, as Clive halted, em¬ 
barrassed. “I know.” 

“You see,” added Clive, “I don’t want you 
to think I’m a baby, to go to pieces like this. 
But the fumes seem to have caught me where I 
was gassed, at Montfaucon. Started up all the 
old pain and gasping and faintness, and heart 
bother and splitting headache again. I’ve heard 
it comes back, like that. The surgeon told me 
it might. And now I know it does. It’s put me 
pretty well onto the discard. But a few days 
quiet will set me on my feet.” 

“So you rolled over here, first crack out of 
the box?” suggested Willis Chase. “By way of 
keeping perfectly quiet?” 

“No,” denied Clive, looking up, apologetically, 



An Involuntary Landlord 53 

from his second cup of black coffee. “I came 
over to sponge on Thax, if he’ll let me. Thax, 
will it bother you a whole lot if I stay here with 
you for a few days? I won’t be in the way. 
And I know you’ve got lots of room, and no¬ 
body else is stopping with you. I don’t want to 
put it on the ‘hotel’ basis. But that’s what gave 
me the nerve to ask—” 

“Rot!” exclaimed Thaxton, in forced cordial¬ 
ity. “What’s the use of all that preamble? 
You’re knocked off your feet. You can’t stay 
at home. Every inn is full, for ten miles around. 
I can understand your not wanting to stay with 
Oz. If you hadn’t come here, I’d have come 
after you. Of course, you must stay.” 

As a matter of fact, all Vail’s boyhood friend¬ 
ship for the invalid was called upon, to make the 
invitation sound spontaneous. He liked Clive. 
He liked him better than any other friend. 
Ordinarily, it would have been a joy to have 
him for a house-guest. The two men had al¬ 
ways been congenial, even though they had seen 
less of each other since their return from France 
and had abated some of the oldtime boyish 
chumship. 

Yet with Doris Lane coming to Vailholme, 
the host had dreamed of long uninterrupted 


54 The Amateur Inn 

hours with her. And now the presence of this 
other admirer of hers would block most of his 
golden plans. Yet there was no way out of it. 
In any event Willis Chase’s undesired arrival 
had wrecked his hopes for sweet seclusion. So 
the man made the best of the annoying situa¬ 
tion and threw into his voice and manner the 
cordiality he could not put into his heart. 

He was ashamed of himself for his sub-resent¬ 
ment that this sick comrade of his should find 
no warmer welcome, in appealing to him for hos¬ 
pitality. Yet the dream of having Doris all to 
himself for hours a day had been so joyous! 
While he could not rebuff Clive as he had sought 
to rebuff Willis Chase, yet he could not be glad 
the invalid had chosen this particular time to de¬ 
scend upon Vailholme. 

Sending for Mrs. Horoson, his elderly house¬ 
keeper, he bade her prepare the two east rooms 
for Clive’s reception. 

“Say!” Chase broke in on the instructions. 
“You told me that measly magenta room was 
the only one you had vacant!” 

“I did not,” rasped Thaxton. “I told you it 
was the only one you could have. And it is. I 
hope you won’t take it. If I’d had any sense 


An Involuntary Landlord 55 

I’d have said the furnace room was the only one 
I’d give you. That or the coal cellar.” 

“Never mind! ” sighed Chase, with true Chris¬ 
tian resignation. “What am /, to complain? 
What am I?” 

“I’d hate to tell you,” snapped Thaxton. 

“What are you charging Clive?” demanded 
Willis. 

“A penny a year. Laundry three cents extra. 
He—” 

“Miss Gregg, sir. Miss Lane,” announced the 
sour-visaged butler, from the dining room door¬ 
way. 

Thaxton arose wearily and went to meet his 
guests. All night he had mused happily on the 
rare chance which was to make Doris and him¬ 
self housemates for an entire rapturous week— 
a week, presumably, in which Miss Gregg should 
busy herself on long daily inspection visits to 
Stormcrest. And now—an invalid and a cheery 
pest were to shatter that lovely solitude. 



Chapter IV 

TWO OR THREE INTRUDERS 
ET luncheon was a gay enough meal. All 



JL the guests were old friends, and all were 
more or less congenial. Thaxton’s duties as host 
were in no way onerous, except when Willis 
Chase undertook to guy him as to his anamolous 
position as hotelkeeper—which Chase pro¬ 
ceeded to do at intervals varying from two min¬ 
utes to fifteen. 

In the afternoon, Miss Gregg was forced to 
drive across to Stormcrest, to superintend the 
first touches of the decorators to her remaining 
rooms. Clive made some excuse for retiring 
shakily to his own rooms for a rest. Willis 
Chase had to go back to Stockbridge on urgent 
business—having found, on unpacking, that in 
his haste he had brought along all his evening 
clothes except the trousers. 

Thus, for an hour or so, Vail had Doris Lane 
to himself. They idled about the grounds, 
Vail showing the girl his new sunken garden and 
his trout hatcheries. Throughout the dawdling 


Two or Three Intruders 57 

tour they talked idly and blissfully, and withal 
a whit shyly, as do lovers on whom the Great 
Moment is making ready to dawn. At their 
heels paced Vail’s dark sable collie, Macduff. 

The sky was hazy, the air was hot. Weather- 
wise Berkshire folk would have prophesied a 
torrid spell, the more unbearable for the bracing 
cool of the region’s normal air. But the hot 
wave had merely sent this mildly tepid day as a 
herald. 

To the lounging young folk in the garden it 
carried no message. Yet at whiles they fell 
silent as they drifted aimlessly about the 
grounds. There was a witchery that both found 
hard to ignore. 

Rousing herself embarrassedly from one of 
these sweet silences, Doris nodded toward the 
big brown collie, who had come to a standstill 
in front of a puffy and warty old toad, fly-catch¬ 
ing at the edge of a rock shelf. 

The dog, strolling along in bored majesty in 
front of his human escorts, had caught the acrid 
scent of the toad and was crouching truculently 
in front of it, making little slapping gestures at 
the phlegmatic creature with his white forepaws 
and then bounding back, as if he feared it might 
turn and rend him. 


58 [The Amateur Inn 

It was quite evident that Macduff regarded 
his encounter with that somnolent toad as one 
of the High Dramatic Moments of his career. 
Defiantly, yet with elaborate caution, he pro¬ 
ceeded to harry it from a safe distance. 

“What on earth makes him so silly?” asked 
Doris as she and Vail paused to watch the scene 
—the dog’s furry and fast-moving body taking 
up the entire narrow width of the path. “He 
' must have seen a million toads, in his time.” 

“What on earth made you cry, the evening 
we saw Bernhardt die, in Camille, when we were 
kids?” he countered, banteringly. “You knew 
she wasn’t really dead. You knew she’d get into 
her street clothes and scrub the ghastliness off 
her face and go out somewhere and eat a big 
supper. But you wept, very happily. And I 
had to give you my spare handkerchief. And it 
had a hole in it, I remember. I was hideously 
mortified. Every time I went to the theater 
with you, after that, I carried a stock of brand- 
new two-dollar handkerchiefs, to impress you. 
But you never cried, again, at a play. So that’s 
all the good they did me. Of course, the one 
time you cried, I had to be there with the last 
torn handkerchief I ever carried. Remember?” 

“I remember I asked you why Mac is so silly 


Two or Three Intruders 59 

about that toad,” she reproved him, “and you 
mask your ignorance of natural history and 
of dog-psychology by changing the subject.” 

“I did not!” he denied, with much fervor. “I 
was leading up in a persuasive yet scholarly way 
to my explanation. You knew Bernhardt wasn’t 
dying. Yet you cried. Mac knows that toad is 
as harmless as they make them. Yet he is fight¬ 
ing a spectacular duel with it. You entered into 
the spirit of a play. He’s entering into the spirit 
of a perilous jungle adventure. You cried be¬ 
cause an elderly Frenchwoman draped herself 
on a sofa and played dead. He is all het up, be¬ 
cause he’s endowing that toad with a blend of 
the qualities of a bear and a charging rhinoceros. 
That’s the collie of it. Collies are forever in¬ 
venting and playing thrillingly dramatic games. 
Just as you and I are always eager to see thrill¬ 
ingly dramatic plays. It isn’t really silly. Or 
if it is, then what are people who pay to get 
thrills out of plays they know aren’t true and 
out of novels that they know are lies? On the 
level, I think Mac has a bit the best of us.” 

“Why doesn’t he bring the sterling drama to 
a climax by annihilating the toad so we can 
get past?” she demanded, adding, “Not that 
I’d let him. That’s why I’m waiting here, 


The Amateur Inn 


60 

while he blocks the path, instead of going 
around him.” 

“If that’s all you’re waiting for,” he reassured 
her, “your long wait has been for nothing. No 
rescue will be needed. Mac will never touch 
the toad.” 

“Does Mac know he won’t, though?” 

“He does,” returned Vail, with finality. 
“Every normal outdoors dog, in early puppy- 
hood, undertakes to bite or pick up a toad. And 
no dog ever tried it a second time. A zoology 
sharp told me why. He said toads’ skins are 
covered with some sort of chemical that would 
make alum taste like sugar, by contrast. It’s 
horrible stuff, and it’s the toad’s only weapon. 
No dog ever takes a second chance of torturing 
his tongue with it. That’s why Mac keeps his 
mouth shut, every time he noses at the ugly 
thing. The toad is quite as safe from him as 
Bernhardt was from dying on the elaborate 
Camille sofa. Mac knows it. And the toad 
knows it. If toads know anything. So nobody’s 
the worse for the drama. . . . One side there, 
Mac! You’re a pest.” 

At the command, the collie gave over his har¬ 
rowing assault, and wandered unconcernedly 
down the path ahead of them, his plumed tail 


Two or Three Intruders 61 

gently waving, his tulip ears alert for some new 
adventure. 

“Remember old Chubb Beasley?” asked 
Thaxton. “He lived down on the Lee Road.” 

“I do, indeed,” she made answer. “He used 
to be pointed out to us by our Sunday School 
teacher as the one best local example of the 
awful effects of drink. What about him?” 

“He owned Macduff’s sire,” said Vail. “A 
great big gold-and-white collie—a beauty. 
Chubb used to go down to Lee, regularly, every 
Saturday, to spend his pay at the speak-easy 
booze joint in the back of Clow’s grocery. The 
old chap used to say: Tf I c’d afford it, I’d have 
a batting average of seven night a week. As 
it is, I gotta do my ’umble best of a Sat’dy 
night.’ And he did it. He came home late 
every Saturday evening, in a condition where 
the width of the road bothered him more than 
the length of it. And always, his loyal old collie 
was waiting at the gate to welcome him and 
guide his tangled footsteps up the walk to the 
house.” 

“Good old collie!” she applauded. “But—” 

“One night, Beasley got to Clow’s just as the 
saloon was raided by the Civic Reform Com¬ 
mittee. He couldn’t get a drink, and he spent 



62 Xhe Amateur Inn 

the evening wandering around looking for one. 
He had to go back home, for the first Saturday 
night in years, dead cold sober. The collie was 
waiting for him at the gate, as usual. Chubb 
strode up to him on steady unwavering legs 
and without either singing or crying. He didn’t 
even walk with an accent. The faithful dog 
sprang at the poor old cuss and bit him. Didn’t 
know his own master.” 

Macduff’s histrionic display, and the story it 
had evoked, dispersed the sweet spell that had 
hung over the man and the maid, throughout 
their leisurely walk. Subconsciously, both felt 
and resented the glamour’s vanishing, without 
being able to realize their own emotions or to 
guess why the ramble had somehow lost its 
dreamy charm. 

They were at the well-defined stage of heart 
malady when a trifle will cloud the elusive sun, 
and when a shattered mood cannot be recon¬ 
structed at will. 

Doris became vaguely aware that the after¬ 
noon was hot and that her nose was probably 
shiny. Instinctively, she turned toward the 
house. 

Vail, unable to frame an excuse for prolong¬ 
ing the stroll, fell into step at her side, obsessed 


Two or Three Intruders 63 

by a dull feeling that the walk had somehow 
been a failure and that he was making no prog¬ 
ress at all in his suit. 

As they made their way houseward across 
the rolling expanse of side-lawn, they saw a 
huge and dusty car drawn up under the 
porte-cochere. On the steps was a heap of 
luggage. A chauffeur stood by the car, stretch¬ 
ing his putteed legs, and smoking a furtive 
cigarette; the machine’s bulk between him and 
the porch. 

In the tonneau lolled a fat and asthmatic¬ 
looking old German police dog. 

On the veranda, in two wicker chairs drawn 
forward from their wonted places, lolled a man 
and a woman swathed in yellow dust-coats. 
The man was enormous, paunchy, pendulous, 
sleek. The woman was small and dark and 
acerb. They were chatting airily, as Vail and 
Doris drew near. 

In front of them wavered Vogel, the butler, 
trying to get in a word edgewise, as they talked. 
Back of the doorway, in the hall, could be seen 
the shadowy forms of the second man and a 
capped maid, listening avidly. 

At sight of Thaxton, the butler abandoned his 
vain effort to interrupt the strangers and came 


64 The Amateur Inn 

in ponderous haste down the stone steps and 
across the lawn to meet his employer. 

“Excuse me, sir,” began Vogel, worriedly, 
“but might I speak to you a minute?” 

Doris, with a word of dismissal to her escort, 
moved on toward the house, entering by a 
French window and giving the queerly occupied 
front veranda a wide berth. 

“Well?” impatiently asked Vail, vexed at the 
interruption and by the presence of the unrec¬ 
ognized couple on the porch. “Well, Vogel? 
What is it? And who are those people?” 

For reply, the butler proffered him two cards. 
He presented them, on their tray, as if afraid 
they might turn and rend him. 

“They are persons, sir,” he said, loftily. “Just 
persons, sir. Not people.” 

Without listening to the distinction, Thaxton 
Vail was scanning the cards. He read, half 
aloud: 

“Mr. Joshua Q. Mosely.” Then, “Mrs. 
Joshua Q. Mosely , 222 River Front Terrace , 
. . . Tuesdays until Lent. ,y 

“Interesting, if true. I should say, offhand, 
it ought to count them about three, decimal 
five,” gravely commented Vail. “But it’s noth¬ 
ing in my young life. I don’t know them.” 


Two or Three Intruders 65 

“No, sir/’ agreed Vogel. “You would not be 
likely to, sir. Nobody would. They are per¬ 
sons. Most peculiar persons, too. I think they 
are a bit jiggled, sir, if I might say so. Un¬ 
balanced. Why, sir, they actually thought this 
was an hotel!” 

“Huh?” interjected Vail, with much the same 
sound as might have been expected from him 
had some one dug an elbow violently into his 
stomach. “Huh? What’s that, Vogel? Hotel?” 

“Yes, sir. That’s why I took the liberty of 
asking to speak to you alone. I fancied you 
would not wish Miss Lane to hear of such a ri¬ 
diculous—” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Why, sir, they came here, some five minutes 
ago, and ordered Francis to conduct them to 
The desk.’ He could not understand, sir, so he 
came to me, and I went out to see what it meant. 
They told me they wished rooms here; for them¬ 
selves and for their chauffeur. And for that 
stout gray dog in the car. They were most un¬ 
necessarily unpleasant, sir, when I told them 
this was no hotel. They insist it is. They say 
they know all about it. And they demand to see 
the proprietor. I was arguing with them when 
I saw you coming. Would it be well, sir, if I 


66 The Amateur Inn 

should telephone the police station at Aura 
or—?” 

“No,” groaned Vail. “Ill see them. You 
needn’t wait.” 

Bracing himself, and cursing his loved great- 
uncle’s eccentricity, and cursing a thousand 
times more vehemently the mischief-act of Os- 
mun Creede, the unhappy householder walked 
up the veranda steps and confronted the two 
newcomers. 

On the way he planned to carry off the situa¬ 
tion with a high hand and to get rid of the 
couple as quickly as might be. Whistling to 
heel Macduff, the collie, who showed strong and 
hostile signs of seeking closer acquaintance with 
the fat police dog, he advanced on the couple. 

“Good afternoon,” he said, briskly, as he bore 
down on the big man and the small woman. “I 
am Thaxton Vail. What can I do for you?” 

“I am Joshua Q. Mosely,” answered the enor¬ 
mous man, making no move to rise from the 
easy chair from whose ample sides his fat 
bulk was billowing sloppily. “What are your 
rates?” 

“Rates?” echoed Vail, dully. 

“Yes,” replied Mosely. “Your rates—Ameri¬ 
can plan—for an outside room and board for 



Two or Three Intruders 67 

Mrs. M. and myself and a shakedown, some¬ 
where, for Pee-air. . . . Pee-air is our chauffeur. 
How much?” 

“Please explain,” said Vail, bluffing weakly. 
“Yep,” nodded Joshua Q. Mosely. “He said 
you’d try to stall. Said you were queer that 
way. But he said if I stuck to it, I’d get in. 
Said he could prove you weren’t full up. So 
I’m sticking to it. How much for—?” 

“Who are you talking about?” queried Vail. 
“Who’s ‘he’? And—” 

“Here’s his card,” responded Joshua Q. 
Mosely, groping in an inner pocket. “Met him 
on the steps of the Red Lion—at Stockbridge, 
you know—this morning. They’d told us they 
hadn’t a room left there. Same thing at Had- 
don Hall. Same thing at Pittsfield. Same thing 
at Lenox. Same at Lee. Full everywhere. 
Gee, but you Berkshire hotel men must be mak¬ 
ing a big turnover, this season! Yep, here’s 
his card. Thought I’d lost it.” 

He fished out a slightly crumpled oblong of 
stiff paper and handed it to Vail. Thaxton read: 
“Mr. Osmun Creede, ‘CanobieAura , Massa¬ 
chusetts” 

“We were coming out of the Red Lion,” re¬ 
sumed Joshua Q. Mosely. “Figured we’d have 


68 


The Amateur Inn 


to drive all the way to Greenfield or maybe to 
Springfield, before we could get rooms. We 
didn’t want to do that. We wanted another 
day in this region and then make the thirty-mile 
run to Williamstown and back to North Adams 
and over the Mohawk Trail to—” 

“Quite so,” cut in Vail. “What has all this to 
do with—?” 

“I was coming to that. We were standing 
there on the steps, jawing about it, the wife and 
me, when up comes this Mr. Creede. He’d been 
sitting on the porch there and he’d overheard 
us. He hands me his card and he says: ‘You 
can get into Vailholme if you’re a mind to/ 
he says. ‘Most excloosive hotel in the Berk- 
shires. Not like any other place in America. 
Best food. Best rooms. They never advertise. 
So they aren’t full up/ he says. ‘They try to 
keep folks away. But give Mr. Vail this card 
and tell him I’ll know who to go to with infor¬ 
mation if he refuses to take in people who can’t 
get accommodations elsewhere; and he’ll take 

you in.’ I thought maybe he was jollying me.” 
_>> 

“He looked kind of funny while he talked to 
me,” prattled Mosely, unheeding. “So I 
asked the day clerk at the Red Lion about it. 


Two or Three Intruders 69 

The clerk said he knew you run a hotel, because 
he’d read about it in the paper. And he guessed 
you weren’t full up. So here I came. And 
your—your head waiter, I s’pose he is, he told 
me you didn’t have but four folks stopping here 
with you just now. So that means you’ve got 
rooms left. What rates for—” 

A despairing grunt from Vail checked at last 
the flow of monologue. Thaxton was aware of 
a deep yearning to hunt up Osmun Creede and 
murder him. Well did he understand the inner 
meaning of Creede’s hint as to the lodging of 
information in case Vail should refuse to obey 
the terms of the will whereby he held tenure 
of Vailholme. And he knew Osmun was quite 
capable of keeping his word. 

Vailholme was dear to Thaxton. He was not 
minded to lose it through any legal loophole. 
He was profoundly ignorant of the law. But he 
remembered signing an agreement to fulfill all 
the conditions of his greatuncle’s will before as¬ 
suming ownership of the property. 

“I am obliged,” he said, haltingly, “to take in 
any travelers who can pay my prices. Probably 
that is what Mr. Creede meant. But I have no 
adequate provision—or provisions—for guests. 
I don’t think you’d care for it, here; even for a 


70 The Amateur Inn 

single day. Why not go on to North Adams, to 
the—” 

“No, thanks, friend,” disclaimed Joshua Q. 
Mosely, with a leer of infinite cunning. “This 
isn’t the first time the wife and I have been 
steered away from excloosive joints. We know 
the signs. And we want to stop here. So here 
we stop. For the night, anyhow. We know our 
rights. And we know the law. Now, once more, 
what’s your rates for us? Put a price on the—” 

“Your chauffeur will have to bunk in at one 
of the rooms over the garage,” said Vail, mor¬ 
bidly aware that the butler and a maid and the 
second man were still listening from the hall¬ 
way. “And I can’t give you and Mrs. Mosely 
a room with a bath. I’ll have to give you one 
without. And you’ll have to eat at the only 
table I have—the table where I and my four 
personal guests will dine.” 

“That’s all right,” pleasantly agreed the tour¬ 
ist. “We’re democratic, Mrs. M. and me. We’ll 
put up with the best we can get. How much?” 

“For all three of you,” said Thaxton, “the 
lump price will be—let’s see—the lump price 
will be two hundred dollars a day.” 

Joshua Q. Mosely gobbled. His lean little 
wife arose and faced him. 




Two or Three Intruders 71 

“It’s just like all these other excloosive places, 
Josh!” she shrilled. “He’s trying to lose us. 
Don’t you let him! We’ll stay. It’ll be worth 
two hundred dollars just to spite the stuck-up 
chap. We’ll stay, young man. Get that? 
We’ll stay. If you knew anything about Golden 
City, you’d know two hundred dollars is no more 
to my husband than a plugged nickel would be 
worth to one of you Massachusetts snobs. We’re 
‘doing’ the Berkshires. And we’re prepared to 
be done while we’re doing it. We can afford to. 
Have us shown up to that room.” 

Lugubriously Vail stepped to the hall door. 

“Vogel,” he said, as a vanishing swarm of ser¬ 
vants greeted his advent, “show these people up 
to the violet room. Have Francis help their 
chauffeur up with the luggage. Then have Gav- 
roche take the chauffeur to one of the garage 
rooms.” 

He spoke with much authority; and forcibly 
withal. But he dared not meet the fishy eye of 
his butler. And he retreated to the veranda 
again, as soon as he had delivered the order. 

“It’s all up,” he announced to Willis Chase, 
three minutes later, as this first of his unwelcome 
guests alighted from a Stockbridge taxi, bearing 
a bagful of the forgotten sections of his apparel. 


72 


The Amateur Inn 

“Here’s where I decamp. If I can’t get some 
inn to put me up for the night, I’ll take a train 
for New York.” 

“And leave us to our fate?” queried Chase, 
disgustedly. 

“Precisely that. And I hope it’ll be a misera¬ 
ble fate. What do you suppose has hap¬ 
pened?” 

Briefly, bitterly, he told of the arrival of the 
Moselys. Willis Chase smiled in pure rapture. 
Then his face fell as he asked concernedly: 

“And you say you’re getting out and desert¬ 
ing us?” 

“Why not? It’ll be horrible. Fancy those 
two unspeakable vulgarians sitting down to din¬ 
ner with one! Fancy having to meet Vogel’s 
righteous wrath! Fancy—” 

“Fancy walking out on us!” retorted Chase. 
“Fancy leaving a girl like Doris Lane to the 
mercies of the Moselys’ society at dinner! 
Fancy what she’ll think of you for deserting her 
and her aunt, like a quitter, when your place is 
at the head of your own table! Fancy leaving a 
disorganized household that’ll probably go on 
strike! We’ve paid our board. Are you going 
to welsh on us? Poor old Clive Creede is sick 


Two or Three Intruders 73 

and all shot to pieces. He came here to you 
for refuge. Going to leave him to—?” 

“No/’ groaned Thaxton. “I suppose not. 
You’re right. I can’t. I’ve got to stay and see 
it out. If I valued Vailholme any less than I 
value my right arm, though, I’d let Uncle Oz’s 
fool conditions go to blazes. Say! Let’s go 
for a walk. It’s hot as Tophet and I’m tired. 
But it’ll be better than meeting Vogel till I 
have to. Let me put that off as long as I can. 
Something tells me he is going to be nasty. And 
that means he’ll probably organize a strike. 
Come along, Macduff!” he bade the collie. 
“Stop nosing at that obese German dog in the 
car and come here!” 

“Why can’t real life butlers be like the dear 
old stage butlers?” sighed Chase, sympatheti¬ 
cally, as he and Vail slunk, with guilty haste, 
down the veranda steps and across the lawn. 
“Now if only Vogel were on the stage, he’d 
come to you, with an antique ruffled shirt and 
with his knees wabbling, and he’d say: £ Master, 
I’ve saved up a little out of my wages, this past 
ninety years that I’ve served your house. I 
know you’re in trouble. Here’s my savings, 
Master! Maybe they’ll help. And I’ll keep on 


74 


The Amateur Inn 


working my poor hands to the bone for you, 
without any wages, God bless your bonny face!’ 
That’s what he’d say. And he’d snivel a bit as 
he said it. So would the audience.” 

“Faster!” urged Vail, with a covert look over 
his shoulder. “He’s standing on the steps, look¬ 
ing after us. Hit the pace!” 


Chapter V 

ROBBER’S ROOST, UNINCORPORATED 


F ROM a roadhouse two miles away Thax- 
ton called up Mrs. Horoson, his house¬ 
keeper. Without giving her a chance to protest 
he told her there would be six, besides himself, 
for dinner that night and that a Mr. and Mrs. 
Mosely were occupying the violet room. 

He bade her break the news to Miss Gregg, 
on the latter’s imminent return from Stormcrest, 
and to Miss Lane. Then he hung up, precipi¬ 
tately, and rejoined Chase in the road. 

“Let’s hustle!” he adjured. “She may find 
where we are from Central and follow us. I 
can count on Horoson not to decamp even if the 
servants do. But every now and then I feel 
toward her as I used to when I was a kid and 
she caught me stealing Uncle Oz’s cigarettes. 
Hurry!” 

It was within a half hour of dinner time when 
Vail and Chase, by devious back ways, returned 
to Vailholme and let themselves in at a rear 
door, preparatory to creeping upstairs to their 

rooms to dress for the seven-o’clock meal. 

75 


The Amateur Inn 


76 

The dinner ordeal was one of unrelieved hid¬ 
eousness. But for gallant old Miss Gregg, the 
situation must have fallen asunder much sooner 
than it did. Thaxton Vail, at the table’s head, 
writhed in misery. He had absolutely no idea 
how to handle the unhandleable situation. 

It was Miss Gregg who, unasked, took control 
of everything. Being wholly fearless, she had 
no normal terror of the austere Horoson or of 
the ever-sourer-visaged Vogel. 

During the endless wait before dinner was an¬ 
nounced she slipped out to the dining room. 
Thaxton was there, flustered and curt, trying to 
coerce his rebellious upper servants into setting 
the wheels of domestic machinery into motion. 

Vogel already had given warning, proclaim¬ 
ing briefly but proudly the list of his former 
super-excellent positions, and repeating, as a 
sort of eternal slogan of refrain that he was a 
butler and not a boarding-house head waiter. 

It was at this point that Hester Gregg took 
charge. 

Grateful and sweating, Vail went back to the 
living room to listen gloomily to the Moselys’ 
recital to Chase and Doris of the various inns 
at which they had been either cheated or incom¬ 
petently served. Though the couple did not say 


Robber’s Roost 


77 


so in actual words, Thaxton was left to infer 
that Vailholme combined the worst qualities of 
all their tour’s other wretched stopping places. 

As he listened to the tale, Miss Gregg swept 
into the room again with the pure exaltation 
in her eyes of one who has triumphed in a 
seemingly hopeless battle. Presently thereafter 
Vogel announced dinner. 

As the party filed stragglingly into the dining 
room, Clive Creede came downstairs and joined 
them. He seemed a little better for his after¬ 
noon’s rest, but still looked sick and shaky. 

Thaxton’s collie, as usual, accompanied Vail 
to the dining room, lying down majestically on 
the floor at the host’s left. From the shelter of 
Joshua Q. Mosely’s bulk appeared the obese 
police dog, who also had followed into the dining 
room. He disposed himself in a shadowy space, 
behind Mrs. Mosely’s chair, where every passing 
servant must stumble unseeingly over him. 

“I hope you don’t mind our bringing Petty to 
dinner with us,” said Joshua Q., as they sat 
down. “He’s quite one of the family. The wife 
would as soon travel without her powder rag as 
without Petty. He goes everywhere with us. 
Nice collie you’ve got there. I notice you had 
to speak pretty firm to him, though, to keep 


78 


The Amateur Inn 

him from pestering poor Petty. Collies aren’t 
as clever at minding as police dogs. Had him 
long?” 

“He was bred by Mr. Creede, here,” answered 
Thaxton. “When Mr. Creede went overseas, 
he left him at Vailholme.” 

“And when I got back,” put in Clive, speak¬ 
ing for the first time, and addressing Doris, 
“Macduff had dean forgotten me and had 
adopted Thax. Soj I let him stay on here. 
Funny, wasn’t it? I’ve heard collies never for¬ 
get. I suppose that’s another nature fake. For 
Macduff certainly had forgotten me. At least, 
he was civil to me, but he’d lost all interest in 
me.” 

Then fell a pause. Miss Gregg arose to the 
occasion by starting the conversation-ball to 
rolling again. 

“I think,” she said, “there ought to be a 
S. P. C. A. law against naming animals till 
they’re grown. People call a baby pup ‘Fluffy’ 
or ‘Beauty.’ And then he grows up to look like 
Bill Sikes’ dog. For instance, there’s nothing 
‘petty’ about that big police dog. Yet when he 
was a—” 

“Oh,” spoke up Mrs. Mosely, “his name isn’t 


Robber’s Roost 79 

really ‘Petty.’ ‘Petty’ is short for ‘Pet.’ His 
real name’s ‘Pet.’ He—” 

Willis Chase cleared his throat portentously. 
Leaning far across the table, he addressed the 
miserable Thaxton. 

“Landlord!” he began, in awful imitation of 
the pompous Joshua Q. Mosely. “Landlord, me 
good man, I—” 

“Shut up!” snarled Vail, under his breath, 
glaring murderously. 

A smile of utter sweetness overspread Willis 
Chase’s long countenance. 

“Tut, tut!” he chided, patronizingly. “Don’t 
cringe, when I address you, my honest fellow! 
Don’t be servile, just because I am a gentleman 
and your own lot is cast among the working 
classes. I have every respect for the dignity of 
labor. I don’t look down on you. In Heaven’s 
sight all men are equal—landlords and gentle¬ 
men and day laborers and plumbers and senators 
and bootleggers and authors and—” 

“That sounds fine in theory, Mr.—Mr. Case, 
is it?” boomed Joshua Q. “But it don’t work 
out always in real life. Not that I look down 
on a man just because he’s got to run an inn 
or a boarding house to make a living. Nor yet 


80 


The Amateur Inn 


I don’t really look down on day laborers. Nor 
yet on plumbers. Not even on authors—when 
they keep their place. But what’s it to profit 
those of us who’ve made good and won our way 
to the leisure classes, as you might say? What’s 
it to profit us if we’re to be put on a level with 
folks who get paid for serving us? Money’s got 
to count for something, hasn’t it? If a man’s 
got the brain and the genius and the push to 
pile up a fortune, don’t he deserve to stand a 
notch higher than the boob who ain’t—who 
hasn't? Don’t he? Position means something. 
It—” 

“And family, too!” chimed in Mrs. Mosely, 
with much elegance of diction. “I always tell 
Mr. M. that family counts every bit as much as 
money, or it ought to. Even in these democratic 
days. I believe in family. I don’t boast of it. 
But I believe in it. While I don’t brag about 
my grandfather being the first Governor of—” 

“Grandfathers!” sighed Willis Chase, ecsta¬ 
tically. “Now you’ve touched my own hobby, 
Mrs.—Mrs. Mousely. I—” 

“Mosely,” corrected Joshua Q., with much 
dignity. “And—” 

“To be sure,” apologized Chase, meekly. 
“My mistake. But I murmur ‘Amen! ’ to all you 


81 


Robber’s Roost 

say about family and grandfathers. I even go a 
step beyond. I even believe in pride of great - 
grandfathers.” 

“Why—why, cert’nly,” assented Mrs. Mosely, 
albeit with a shade less assurance. “Of course. 
“And—” 

“My own greatgrandfather,” expounded Wil¬ 
lis, unctuously, “my own great-grandfather, 
Colonel Weilguse Chase, was the first white man 
to be hanged in New Jersey. Not that I brag 
unduly of it. Yet it is sweet to remember, in 
this age of so-called equality. . . . Landlord, 
these trout are probably more or less fit to eat. 
But my doctor forbids me to guzzle fish. I won¬ 
der if I might trouble you to order a little fried 
tripe for me? I am willing to pay extra for it, 
of course. Nothing sets off a dinner like a side 
dish of fried tripe. Or, still better, a nice juicy 
slice of roast shoulder of tripe. But, speaking 
of family—” 

“I’m afraid you don’t just get my point, Mr. 
Case,” interposed Mrs. Mosely. “I mean about 
family. I don’t believe in pride of ancestors— 
merely as ancestors. But I believe in being 
proud of ancestors who achieved something 
worth while. Do you see the distinction?” 

“Certainly,” agreed Chase, with much pro- 


82 


The Amateur Inn 


fundity. “And I feel the same way. Now, out 
of all the millions of white men, great and small, 
who from time to time have infested New Jer¬ 
sey, there could be but one ‘first white man’ 
hanged there. And that startling honor was re¬ 
served for my own great-grandfather. Not that 
I brag of it—as I said. But people like you and 
myself, Mrs. Mousely, can at least be honestly 
proud of our ancestors. Now, I suppose our 
genial landlord here—” 

“Luella!” boomed Joshua Q. Mosely, in sud¬ 
den comprehension. “This—this person is 
pokin’ fun at you. I’ll thank you, young 
man—” 

“Speaking of family,” deftly intervened Miss 
Gregg, while Mosely and Vail, from opposite 
sides of the table, looked homicide at the un¬ 
ruffled Chase, “speaking of family, Clive, you 
remember the Bacons, who used to live just be¬ 
yond Canobie, don’t you? Your father asked 
pompous old Standish Bacon if he happened to 
be descended from Sir Francis Bacon. He an¬ 
swered: ‘Sir Francis left no descendants. But 
if he had, I should be one of them.’ He—” 

“If Mr. Case thinks it is a gentlemanly thing 
to insult—” boomed Joshua Q., afresh. 

“That’s just like Bacon,” cut in Clive Creede, 


Robber's Roost 83 

coming to the old lady’s rescue. “My father 
used to say—” 

Then he fell silent, as though his tired mind 
was not equal to further invention. He did not 
so much as recall the possibly mythical Bacon, 
and he had not the energy to improvise further. 

But Miss Gregg’s mind was never tired, nor 
was her endurance-trained tongue acquainted 
with weariness. And before Mosely could 
boom his protest afresh, she was in her stride 
once more. 

“You’re right,” she assured Clive. “He was 
just that sort. If Standish Bacon had lived in 
Bible times, he’d never have been content to be 
one of the Apostles. He’d have insisted on 
being all twelve of them and a couple of the 
High Priests thrown in. Doris, you’ll remem¬ 
ber the time I told him that?” 

“Yes,” assented the girl, breaking involun¬ 
tarily into the queer little child-laugh that Vail 
loved. “I do, indeed. And I remember what 
he answered. He—” 

“If Mr. Case—” blustered the undeterred 
Mosely. 

“I’d forgotten that part of it,” purred Miss 
Gregg, ignoring Joshua Q. “I remember now. 
He said, in that stiff old-fashioned way of his: 



84 


The Amateur Inn 


‘Madam, 3'ou exaggerate. Yet in all modesty 
I may venture to believe that if I had lived in 
Bible times, my unworthy name might have had 
the honor to be mentioned in that Book of 
Books. Lesser folk than myself were mentioned 
there by name. Fishermen and tanners and 
coppersmiths and the like.’ ” 

“No?” exploded Vail. “Did Bacon really say 
that? The old windbag! And you let him get 
away with it, Miss Gregg? I should have 
thought—” 

“No,” replied the old lady, complacently. “I 
can’t say I really ‘let him get away with it.’ At 
least, not very far away. I’m afraid I even lost 
my gentle temper, and that for once in my life 
I was just a little rude. I said to him: ‘Why, 
Standish Bacon, you couldn’t have gotten your 
name in Holy Writ if you’d lived through every 
one of its books. You couldn’t even have gotten 
in by name if you’d broken up one of St. Paul’s 
most crowded meetings at Ephesus. The best 
mention you could have hoped to get for that 
would have been a verse, tucked away some¬ 
where in the middle of a chapter, in the Epistle 
to the Ephesians. A verse like this: ‘And, it 
came to pass in those days that a Certain Man 


Robber’s Roost 85 

of Ephesus busted up the meeting! f Bacon 
didn’t like it very well. But he—” 

Joshua Q. Mosely and his glaringly indignant 
wife had been shut out of the talk as skillfully 
as Miss Gregg’s ingenuity could devise. But 
mere ingenuity cannot forever hold its own 
against a bull-bellow voice. Now as the old 
lady still rambled on, Joshua Q. burst forth 
again: 

“Excuse me for speaking out of turn, as the 
feller said!” he declaimed. “But I want this 
Case person to know— Hey, there!” he broke 
off, in dismay. “What’s happenin’?” 

For again the substance of his diatribe was 
shattered. 

This time the needed and heaven-sent inter¬ 
ruption did not come from Miss Gregg, but from 
Macduff and Petty. 

Thaxton, absent-mindedly, had tossed a frag¬ 
ment of trout to Macduff on the floor beside 
him. He had long since dropped into the habit 
of giving the collie surreptitious tidbits during 
the course of a meal. Macduff was wont to ac¬ 
cept them gravely, and he never begged. 

But to-night, from his post behind Mrs. 
Mosely’s chair, the ever-hungry police dog 


86 The Amateur Inn 

caught sight of the tossed morsel. He lumbered 
forward to grab it. Macduff daintily picked up 
and swallowed the food, a second before Petty 
could seize it. 

Angry at loss of the prize and at another dog 
daring to get ahead of him, Petty launched him¬ 
self at the unsuspecting collie, driving his teeth 
into Macduff’s fur-armored neck. 

The collie resented this egregious attack by 
writhing out from under his assailant, wrenching 
free from the half-averted grip, and flying at the 
police dog’s throat. 

In a flash of time an industrious and rackety 
dog fight was in progress all over the dining 
room. 

One of the maids screeched. Every one 
jumped up. A chair was overturned bangingly. 
Mrs. Mosely shrieked: 

“The brute is murdering poor darling Petty! 
Help!” 

Excited past all caution, she dashed between 
the rearing and roaring combatants just as 
Thaxton Vail recovered enough presence of 
mind to shout imperatively to his collie. 

At the command Macduff ceased to lay on. 
Turning reluctantly, he walked back to his mas¬ 
ter. Joshua Q. Mosely, meantime, had flung 


Robber’s Roost 


87 


his incalculable weight upon the bellicose Petty, 
pinning the luckless police dog to the floor. The 
fight was over. 

Mrs. Mosely’s shrill voice, raised in anguish, 
soared above the hubbub. 

“He’s bitten me!” she cried, nursing a bony 
finger whose knuckle bore a faint abrasion from 
the glancing eyetooth of one of the warriors. 
“That wretched collie has bitten me!” 

Then it was that Joshua Q. Mosely proved 
himself a master of men and of situations. 
Holding the fat police dog by the studded collar, 
he drew himself to his full height. 

“Come up to the room, Luella!” he bade his 
hysterical wife. “I’ll wash out the cut for you 
and bind it up nice. If it’s bad, we’ll have a 
doctor for it. As for you,” he continued, glower¬ 
ing awesomely upon Vail, “you’re just at the 
first of what you’re going to get for this. You 
tried to keep us from stopping here. Then you 
egged on one of your other guests to insult Mrs. 
M. at the table. And now your dog attacks 
ours and then bites my wife. We’re going to 
the room. To-morrow morning we’ll have break¬ 
fast in it. You can send up the bill at the same 
time. Because I don’t mean to sully my eyes 
or Mrs. M.’s by looking on your face again. 


The Amateur Inn 


88 

As soon as breakfast’s over we are leaving. At 
the first police station I shall lodge complaint 
against you for maintaining a vicious dog, a 
menace to public safety. And I’m going to 
write this whole affair to my counsel and in¬ 
struct him to institoot action. Come, Luella.” 

Out of the room they strode, Petty lugged 
protestingly along between them. Miss Gregg 
broke the instant of dread silence by saying de¬ 
cisively: 

“I’m not surprised. I make it a rule never 
to be surprised at anything said or done by a 
man who calls his wife ‘Mrs. M.’ or ‘Mrs. Any- 
Other-Initial,’ or who speaks of ‘the room.’ And 
their fat dog was the only one of them that 
didn’t eat fish with a knife. Just the same, 
Willis, you ought to be spanked! I’m ashamed 
of you. It was all your fault; for trying to be 
funny with people outside your own class. 
That’s as dangerous as massaging a mule’s tail, 
and ten times as inexcusable.” 

“I’m awfully sorry,” said Chase, remorse¬ 
fully. “Honestly, I am. The only bright side 
to it is the man’s promise that we’ll not see 
either of them again. I’m sorry, Thax. I—” 

Down the stairs clattered two pairs of bump¬ 
ily running feet. Into the dining room burst a 


Robber’s Roost 89 

flamingly red and bellowing Joshua Q. Mosely, 
his wife spluttering along at his heels. 

“We been robbed!” squealed Mosely, too up¬ 
set to remember to boom. 

“What?” gasped Vail, as the others stared 
open-mouthed. 

Mosely repeated his clarion announcement: 

“Robbed! Mrs. M.’s jewel case pinched 
right out of her locked bag. Twelve thousand 
dollars’ worth of joolry stolen. It was there 
when we come down to dinner, and now it’s 
gone, and the bag is busted open. I—” 

“What are you talking about?” demanded 
Thaxton. “You can’t have been robbed— here! 
What—?” 

“Can’t, hey?” roared Mosely, his emotion 
scaling to the secondary stage. “Can’t, hey?” 
he reiterated as he advanced on Vail with swing¬ 
ing fists. “Well, we have! You’ve had us 
cleaned out! You run a robber’s roost here, you 
dirty thief!” 

Furious past further articulate words, Joshua 
Q. shook a hamlike fist in Thaxton’s astonished 
face. Vail stepped in under the flailing arm. 
Then he proceeded, quietly and scientifically, to 
knock the giant down. 

After which, everything happened at once. 


Chapter VI 

THE POLICE AND THE DUKE OF ARGYLE 


T EN minutes later they trailed downstairs 
from a mournful inspection of the violet 
room. There could be no doubt as to the truth 
of what Joshua Q. Mosely had told them. The 
smallest of the traveling bags heaped in a corner 
of the room had been broken open. So had the 
flimsy lock of the chased silver jewel box it con¬ 
tained. 

The thief, apparently, had made brief exami¬ 
nation of the various bags in the jumbled heap 
until he had come upon the only one that was 
locked. Then with a sharp knife or razor he 
had slit the russet leather along the hinge, had 
thrust his hand in and had drawn forth the silver 
box. It had been absurdly simple to force the 
lock of this. Probably it had yielded to the 
first heave of the knifeblade in the crack under 
the lid. 

The window screens had not been disturbed, 

nor were the vines outside broken or disarranged. 

90 


Police and Duke of Argyle 91 

Mosely declared he had left locked the room 
door when he came down to dinner; and had 
pocketed the key. Clive Creede’s comment on 
this information was to go to the door of the 
next room, extract its key and fit it in the door 
of the violet room. It turned the wards with 
entire ease. 

“Most of the doors in private houses, 1 ” said 
Clive, by way of explanation, “have standard 
uniform locks. Any one who wanted to get in 
here could have borrowed the key of any door 
along the hallway. You say you found the door 
wide open when you came back?” 

“Yep,” said Mosely, unconsciously nursing 
his fast-swelling jawpoint. “That’s what made 
us suspicious. So we switched on the light. 
And there was this bag, on top of the rest, all 
bust open. So we—” 

He refrained from repeating, for the ninth 
time, his entire windy recital and mutteringly 
followed the others down to the living room. 

“You look kind of tuckered out, young man,” 
he said, not unkindly, to Clive as he and Creede 
brought up the rear of the procession. 

“I am,” replied Clive. “This shock and the 
scene at dinner and the dog fight and your mix- 
up with Vail—well, they aren’t the best things 



92 The Amateur Inn 

for a sick man. They’ve started my head to 
aching again.” 

“H’m! Too bad!” commented Mosely. “But 
not so bad as if you’d lost $12,000 worth of good 
joolry. ... I s’pose I spoke a little too quick 
when I told Mr. Vail he was a crook and said 
he ran a robber’s roost. But he had no call to 
knock me down. I didn’t carry it any further; 
because I don’t believe in fisticuffs before ladies. 
But I warn you I’m going to summons you folks 
as witnesses in the assault-and-battery suit I 
bring against him. The young ruffian!” 

“If you’re wise, Mr. Mosely,” suggested Clive, 
his usual calm manner sharpening, “you’ll bring 
no suit. You’ll let that part of the matter drop 
as suddenly as you yourself dropped. If we 
have to testify that he knocked you down, we’ll 
also testify to what you called him and that you 
shook your fist at him in what looked like a 
menace. Such a gesture constitutes what 
lawyers call Technical assault.’ No jury will 
convict Vail for self-defense. As for your loss— 
even if this were a regular hotel—you surely 
must know a proprietor is not responsible for 
valuables left in a guest’s room. I’m sorry for 
you. But you seem to have no redress.” 

Mosely glowered blackly. Then, without an- 


Police and Duke of Argyle 93 

swering, he turned his back on Creede and 
stamped into the living room. 

“Telephoned the police yet?” he demanded 
of Vail. 

“No,” said Thaxton. “Call them up yourself 
if you like. The main phone is out there at the 
back of the hall. Call up the Aura police sta¬ 
tion. I suppose we come within its jurisdiction 
more than Lenox’s.” 

Mosely departed in search of the telephone. 
His wife stood in the doorway, wringing her 
hands. 

“Oh, if we’d only left Petty on guard up 
there!” she wailed. “We always feel so safe 
when Petty is on guard! Mr. Vail, I’m certain 
this is an inside job. It—” 

“Yes,” assented Willis Chase. “That’s what 
the police are certain to say, anyhow. When 
they can’t find out anything else, they always 
label it an ‘inside job’ and behave as if that ex¬ 
plained everything.” 

“What is an ‘inside job’?” asked Creede. “It 
sounds familiar. But—” 

“An inside job is a job the police can’t find a 
clue to,” explained Chase. “So they leave the 
rest of the work to the detectives. That’s the 
climax. When a policeman blows out his brains 


94 


The Amateur Inn 

and survives, they make a detective of him. 
Why, Thax, don’t you remember when the Co¬ 
nan t house was robbed and the—” 

“Yes,” answered Vail, grinning at the mem¬ 
ory. “I remember. That was the time Chief 
Quimby’s box of safety matches got afire in his 
hip pocket while he was on his hands and knees 
looking for clues. And you tried to extinguish 
the blaze by kicking him. I remember he 
wanted to jail you for ‘kicking an officer in pur¬ 
suit of his duty.’ You said his hip pocket wasn’t 
‘out yet but seemed to be under control.’ ” 
While they had been talking, Miss Gregg and 
Doris had come quietly into the room. Both 
were a trifle paler than usual, but otherwise 
were unruffled. A moment later Mosely re¬ 
turned from his telephone colloquy with the 
police. 

“The chief says he’ll be right over,” he re¬ 
ported. “He asked if any other rooms had been 
robbed. And I felt like a fool, to have to tell 
him we hadn’t even looked.” 

“If you had waited a minute longer, before 
leaving the telephone,” spoke up Miss Gregg, 
“you could have told him that at least one more 
room had been ransacked. My niece and I 
stopped in our suite, on the way down, just now. 


Police and Duke of Argyle 95 

Her little jewel case and the chamois bag I kept 
my rings and things in—both of them are gone.” 

“Miss Gregg!” exclaimed Vail. “Not really? 
Oh, I’m so sorry! So—” 

A babel of other sympathetic voices drowned 
his stammered condolences. Out of the babel 
emerged Willis Chase’s query. 

“Were they locked up?” 

“Yes, and no,” returned Miss Gregg. “We 
locked them in the second drawer of the dresser 
and hid the key. But being only normal women 
and not Sherlockettes, of course we quite over¬ 
looked locking the top drawer. * The top drawer 
has been carefully taken out and laid on the 
bed. And the case and the chamois bag have 
been painlessly extracted from the second 
drawer. It was so simple! I quite envy the 
brain of that thief. It is a lesson worth the 
price of the things he took—if only they had 
belonged to some one else. . . . 

“Thax Vail! ” she broke off indignantly. “Stop 
looking as if you’d been slapped! You’re not 
going to feel badly about this. I forbid you to. 
Here we all forced ourselves upon you, and 
turned your home upside down, against your 
will! And if we’re the losers, it’s our own fault, 
not yours. We—” 


96 


The Amateur Inn 


She stopped her efforts at consolation, catch¬ 
ing sight of Clive Creede, who slipped unobtru¬ 
sively into the room. A minute earlier she had 
seen him go out and had heard his step on the 
stairs. 

“Well,” she challenged, as she peered up 
shrewdly into his troubled white face. “An¬ 
other county heard from? How much?” 

Clive laughed, in an assumption of careless¬ 
ness, and glanced apologetically at Thaxton. 

“Not much,” he made shift to answer the 
garrulous old lady. “Just a little bunch of bills 
I’d left on my chiffonier and—and a watch. 
That’s all.” 

“The Argyle watch?” cried Miss Lane, in 
genuine concern. “Not the Argyle watch. Oh, 
you poor boy!” 

“What might the Argyle watch be?” acidly 
queried Mrs. Mosely. “It must be something 
priceless, since it seems to stir you people up 
more than our $12,000 loss. But then—of 
course—” 

“The Argyle watch,” explained Doris, fore¬ 
stalling a hot rejoinder from Vail, “is a big, old- 
fashioned, gold, hunting-case watch that the 
Duke of Argyle offered as a scholarship prize 
once at the University of Edinburgh. Mr. 



Police and Duke of Argyle 97 

Creede’s father won it, as a young man. And 
it was his dearest possession. I don’t wonder 
Mr. Creede feels so about its loss. He—” 

“The Duke of Argyle?” repeated Mosely, 
lifted momentarily from his daze of grief by 
sound of so magic and familiar a name. “The 
one who invented the scratching posts that made 
folks say ‘God bless the Duke of Argyle’? I 
read about him in a book. Was he the same 
one?” 

“No,” said Willis Chase, “this was the one 
who put up sandpaper pillars on the border for 
Highlanders to rub the burrs , off their dialect. 
He was the laird of Hootmon Castle, syne aboon 
the sonsie Lochaber.” 

Once more Mosely favored the flippant youth 
with a scowl of utter disgust. Then, turning to 
the rest, he said: 

“An idea has just hit me. I warn you I’m 
going to mention it to the police as soon as they 
get here. We came down to this room before 
dinner, and we had to wait around here for 
pretty near half an hour before we were called 
in to eat. Mr. Vail, you sneaked out of the 
room after we were here. And you were gone 
ten minutes or more. Long enough to—” 

“To rob all my guests?” supplemented Vail. 


98 


The Amateur Inn 


“Quite so. I’m sorry to spoil such a pleasant 
theory. But I was in the dining room trying 
to quell a servile insurrection—trying to stave 
off a domestic strike—so that you might get a 
decently appointed dinner instead of having to 
forage in the ice box after the servants quit.” 

“That’s your version, hey?” grated Mosely. 
“Most likely you can bribe one or two of your 
servants to back it up, too.” 

“I’m sorry, Mr. Mosely,” put in Miss Gregg, 
as Vail choked back a retort. “I’m as sorry as 
Mr. Vail to spoil your perfectly beautiful theory. 
But our sinning host happens to be telling the 
truth. In fact, it is a habit of his. I know he’s 
telling the truth because I went out there to re¬ 
enforce him just as he was losing the battle 
against butler and housekeeper combined, with 
the cook as auxiliary reserve. Of course, / may 
be bribed, too, in my testimony, for all you 
know. So if you care to—” 

“I never doubt a lady’s word, ma’am,” said 
Mosely with ponderous gallantry. 

“Why not?” insisted Miss Gregg. “It’s far 
safer than doubting Thaxton Vail’s. To save 
my life, I couldn’t hit as clean a blow or as hard 
a blow as the one that gave your chin that lovely 



Police and Duke of Argyle 99 

mauve lump on it. Thax, you’re something of 
a fool, but you’re something more of a man. I 
never saw any one knocked down before. Ex¬ 
cept on the stage. I ought to have been sick¬ 
ened by the brutal sight. But I confess it 
thrilled me. I got the same reaction from it 
that I always get when the full Messiah Chorus 
bursts into the ‘Hallelujah.’ It—” 

“Auntie!” cried Doris, scandalized. 

“So did you , for that matter!” accused the 
old lady. “Your eyes were like a pair of over¬ 
grown stars. They—” 

“Suppose,” broke in Doris, reddening pain¬ 
fully, “suppose the rest of us see if the thief 
visited us. Then we can have a full report to 
make when the chief comes. Let’s see—Auntie 
and I—the Moselys—Clive—oh, yes—Willis 
Chase! Is—” 

“I saw him start upstairs a second ago,” said 
Vail. “He—” 

“And, by the way,” exclaimed Joshua Q., on 
new inspiration, “Case didn’t come into the 
dining room till we had all sat down. He hur¬ 
ried in later than—” 

“Chase is always hurrying in ‘later than,’ ” 
said Miss Gregg. “It’s his one claim to distinc- 


100 


The Amateur Inn 


tion. He is never on time anywhere. I’m 
afraid your new theory won’t hold water any 
more than the other did, Mr. Mosely.” 

“If it comes to that,” suggested Clive Creede, 
“7 got downstairs after all the rest of you did. 
Just as you were starting in to dinner. I was 
almost as late as Chase. There’s as much reason 
to suspect me as to suspect him, Mr. Mosely.” 

“No,” denied Joshua Q., judicially, “there 
don’t seem to be. I can’t agree with you. The 
cases might be the same, if you hadn’t lost 
money and a watch. It isn’t likely you robbed 
yourself. Especially of a watch like that Argyle 
one you think so much of. That watch seems to 
be pretty well known to the other folks here. 
And if it’s known to them, it must be known by 
sight to lots of others. After saying it was 
stolen you couldn’t ever let it be seen again if 
you’d just pretended to steal it. No, that lets 
you out, I guess.” 

“Thanks,” said Creede. “I am glad you 
honor me with such perfect trust.” 

He spoke crossly. His face was dead white 
and was creased with pain-lines. Very evi¬ 
dently he was in acute suffering. Doris looked 
at him with worried sympathy. Thaxton Vail 


Police and Duke of Argyle 101 

saw the look, and he was ashamed of the sharp 
pang of jealousy which cut into him. 

Vail knew enough of women at large and of 
Doris Lane in particular to realize that Clive 
Creede, bearing sickness and pain so bravely, 
was by far a more dangerous rival than Clive 
Creede in the glow of health. He was disgusted 
at himself for his own involuntary jealousy to¬ 
ward the man who was his lifelong friend. 

He moved over to where Clive stood wearily 
leaning against the wall. 

“Sit down, old man,” he said, drawing a big 
chair toward him. “You’re all in. This has 
been too much for you. We—” 

“I beg to report,” interrupted Willis Chase, 
airily, coming back from his tour of inspection, 
“I beg to report the total loss of a watch and 
my roll and my extra set of studs. The watch 
was not given to my father by the Duke of Ar¬ 
gyle. But it was given to my father’s only son, 
by Mr. Tiffany, as a prize for giving the said 
Mr. Tiffany a check for $275. The transaction 
was carried on through one of his clerks, of 
course, but that makes it none the less hallowed. 
Besides—” 

“This seems to put it up pretty stiffly to the 



102 The Amateur Inn 

servants/’ said Mosely. “The police better be¬ 
gin with them. By the way, I suppose you’ve 
made sure, Mr. Vail, that none of them could 
sneak away, before the chief gets here.” 

“No,” answered Thaxton, annoyed. “I never 
thought of it. But I’m certain I can trust them. 
They have been with me a long time, most of 
them. And—” 

“Young man,” exhorted Mosely, from the 
depths of his originality, “if you had had as 
much business experience as I’ve had you’d know 
it’s the most trusted employee who does the 
stealing.” 

“Naturally,” assented Miss Gregg. “Why 
not? The trusted employees are the only ones 
who get a chance to handle the valuables. 
That’s one of the truisms nobody thinks of— 
just as people praise Robin Hood because he 
always robbed the rich and never molested the 
poor. Why should he have molested the poor? 
If they’d been worth robbing, they wouldn’t 
have been poor. And it’s the same with—” 

The chug and rattle of a motor car at the 
porte-cochere checked her. A minute later two 
men were ushered into the room by the awe¬ 
stricken Vogel. They were Reuben Quimby, 
the Aura police chief, and one of his constables. 


Chapter VII 

FAITH AND UNFAITH AND SOME MOONLIGHT 

T HE lanky chief did not appear at all ex¬ 
cited. Indeed, he and his assistant went 
about their work with a quiet routine method 
that verged on boredom. They made a per¬ 
functory tour of the robbed rooms; then they 
convened an impromptu court of inquiry in the 
living room, Quimby bidding Vogel and Mrs. 
Horoson to collect the entire service staff of 
house and grounds in the dining room and to 
herd them there until they should be called for, 
one by one. 

Then after listening gravely to Vail’s account 
of the affair and with growing impatience to 

t 

Joshua Q. Mosely’s longer and more dramatic 
recital, Quimby announced that the interroga¬ 
tion would begin. Thaxton was the first wit¬ 
ness. 

“Mr. Vail,” asked the chief, “what did you 
lose? I don’t see your list on this inventory of 
stolen goods you’ve made out for me.” 

Vail looked blank. 

“Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “I never 

103 


104 The Amateur Inn 

thought to look. I was so bothered about the 
others’ losses I clean forgot—” 

“Suppose you go and look now/’ hinted the 
chief. “Be as quick as you can. We’ll delay 
the interrogation till you come back.” 

Thaxton returned to the improvised court¬ 
room in less than three minutes. 

“Not a thing missing, so far as I can see,” he 
reported. “And nothing disturbed. I’m sorry 
to have kept you waiting, Chief. I seem to be 
the only one who escaped a visit from the thief.” 

Clive Creede had been slumping low in the 
chair which Vail had brought him. Now, 
breathing hard, he got weakly to his feet and 
lurched through the open French window out 
onto the moonlit veranda. 

He made his exit so unobtrusively that no one 
but Doris Lane chanced to note it. The girl, 
at sight of his haggard face and stumbling gait, 
followed Creede out into the moonlight. She 
found him leaning against one of the veranda 
pillars, drawing in great breaths of the cool 
night air. 

“Are you worse?” she asked in quick anxiety. 
“Why don’t you go to bed? You’re not fit to 
be up.” 

“Oh, I’m all right,” he declared, pluckily, as 


105 


Faith and Unfaith 

he straightened from his crumpled posture. 
“Don’t worry about me. Only—the room was 
so close and so crowded and so noisy—and I 
felt dizzy—and I had to come out here for a 
lungful of fresh air. I’ll go back presently.” 

She hesitated, as though about to return to 
the others. But the sick man looked so forlorn 
and weak she disliked to leave him alone. Yet, 
knowing how sensitive he was in all things re¬ 
garding his health, she masked her intent under 
pretense of lingering for a chat. 

“I wonder if it was really an ‘inside job,’ ” she 
hazarded. “If it was, of course it must have 
been one of the servants. And I hate to believe 
that. We know every one else concerned, and we 
know we are all honest. That is, we know 
every one but the Moselys. And they couldn’t 
very well have done it, could they?” 

“They couldn’t have done it at all,” he said, 
emphatically. “I know. Because you said they 
were the first people in the living room, waiting 
for dinner. I came down nearly half an hour 
later. I had overslept. When I changed to 
dinner clothes, I left my watch and my cash on 
my chiffonier. They were stolen. The Moselys 
had been downstairs a long time. And they 
didn’t go up again till they went after that dog- 


106 The Amateur Inn 

fight. And then they weren’t gone two minutes 
before they came rushing back to tell us they’d 
been robbed. Not long enough for them to ran¬ 
sack a single unfamiliar room, to say nothing of 
my room and Chase’s and yours. No, we must 
leave the Moselys out of it.” 

“Then it must be one of the servants, of 
course,” decided Doris. 

“I wish I dared hope so,” muttered Clive, al¬ 
most too low for her to catch the words. 

“What do you mean?” she asked in surprise. 

“I mean,” he said, wretchedly, “I mean it 
would be better to find out that one of them 
had robbed us than if— Oh, I don’t mean any¬ 
thing at all!” he ended, in sulky anticlimax. 

She stared at him with wonder. 

“I don’t understand you,” she said. “We’ve 
just proved it couldn’t be any one but the ser¬ 
vants, unless, of course, it was done by some 
professional thief who got in. And that doesn’t 
seem likely.” 

“No,” he said, shortly. “It doesn’t. It was 
done from the inside. That’s proved. . . . 
Let’s talk about something else, shan’t we?” 

But Doris’s curiosity was piqued by his eager¬ 
ness to sheer away from the theme. 

“Tell me,” she insisted. 


107 


Faith and Unfaith 

“Tell you what?” he countered, sullenly. 

“Tell me whom you suspect,” returned Doris. 
“You suspect some one. I know you do. Who 
is it?” 

“I didn’t say I suspected any one,” he made 
troubled answer. “I’d rather not talk about it 
at all, if you don’t mind.” 

“But I do mind,” she protested. “Why, 
Clive, all of us have been living here in this 
corner of the Berkshires every summer since we 
were born! We’ve all known one another all 
our lives. It’s—it’s a terrible thing to feel that 
one of us may be a thief. Won’t you tell me 
whom you suspect?” 

Clive looked glumly down into her appeal¬ 
ingly upraised face for a moment. Then he 
squared his shoulders and spoke. 

“You’ve asked for it,” said he, speaking be¬ 
tween his shut teeth and with growing reluc¬ 
tance. “I’d give ten years’ income not to tell 
you—and I’d give ten years of my life not to be¬ 
lieve it’s he.” 

“Who?” 

He hesitated. Then, a tinge of evasion in his 
unhappy voice, he replied: 

“Every one of us was robbed. . . . Except 
one.” 


108 


The Amateur Inn 


She frowned, perplexed. 

“What’s that got to do with it?” she asked. 
“Thax was the only one of us who wasn’t robbed. 
That doesn’t answer my question at all.” 

He said nothing. 

“Clive Creede!” she burst forth, incredu¬ 
lously. “Do you mean to say you are—are— 
imbecile enough to believe such a thing of 
Thax? Why, I— Clive/” 

There was a world of amazed contempt in her 
young voice. The man winced. Yet he held 
his ground doggedly. 

“Don’t misunderstand me,” he said. “I 
know, as well as you do, that Thax didn’t do it 
through dishonesty or because he needed the 
money. He has more cash now than he can 
spend. But—” v 

“Then why—” 

“Either he did it as a mammoth practical 
joke or else—” 

“Thax is not a practical joker,” she interpo¬ 
lated. “No one but a fool plays practical jokes.” 

“Or else,” he resumed, “he did it to get rid of 
his unwelcome guests. That is the most likely 
solution.” 

“The most likely solution,” she said hotly, 




Faith and Unfaith 109 

“the only sane solution is that he didn’t do it at 
all. It’s absurd to think he did. He—” 

“He is the only one of us who wasn’t robbed,” 
persisted Clive. “He is the only one of us 
familiar enough with every room and every 
piece of furniture to have gone through the house 
so quickly and so thoroughly, taking only the 
most valuable things from each of them. No¬ 
body else would have had time to or a chance 
to. He is the only one of us who could have 
been seen going from room to room without being 
suspected. I thought of all that. But I 
wouldn’t believe it till he said himself just now 
that he hadn’t been robbed. That proved it to 
me. That’s why I came out here. It turned 
me sick to think—” 

“Clive,” said the girl, quietly, “either the war 
or else those exploding chemicals in your Rack- 
rent Farm laboratory seems to have had a dis¬ 
tressing effect on your mentality. I’ve known 
you ever since I was born. In the old days you 
could never have made yourself believe such a 
thing of Thax Vail. You know you couldn’t. 
Oh, if—” 

Her sweet voice trembled. She turned away, 
staring blindly out into the moonlight. 



110 The Amateur Inn 

“Fm sorry/’ said Clive, briefly. 

He hesitated, looking in distress at her averted 
head. Then with a catch of the breath he 
turned and strode into the living room. 

Doris took a step toward the French window 
to follow him. But there were tears in her eyes, 
and she felt strangely shaken and unhappy from 
her talk with Creede. She did not wish the 
others to see her until she should have had time 
to recover her self-control. Wherefore she re¬ 
mained where she was. 

She was dully astonished that Clive’s disbe¬ 
lief in Vail should have moved her so profoundly. 
She had not realized, until she heard him at¬ 
tacked, all that Thaxton was coming to mean to 
her. A glimpse of this new wonder-feeling had 
been vouchsafed her when she saw Vail knock 
down a man so much larger and bulkier than 
himself. The sight had thrilled her unaccounta¬ 
bly. But it had been as nothing to the reaction 
at hearing his honesty doubted. 

Long she stood there, forcing herself to look 
in the face this astounding situation wherein 
her heart had so imperceptibly floundered. At 
last, turning from her blind survey of the moon- 
flooded lawn, she moved toward the living room. 

At her first step she paused. Some one was 


Faith and Unfaith 


111 


rounding the house from the front, treading 
heavily on the rose-bordered gravel path that 
skirted the veranda. Doris waited for the new¬ 
comer to draw nearer. 

On came the heavy, fast-moving steps. And 
now they were mounting the veranda’s side 
stair. In the moonlight, the face and body of a 
man were clearly revealed. 


Chapter VIII 


THE INQUISITION 


T first glance the man was Clive Creede. 



1 jl And Doris wondered how he chanced to 
have left the house and to have approached the 
veranda in such a roundabout way. 

Then, as he stood before her, she saw he was 
not in dinner clothes, but in a dark lounge suit. 
And as he lifted his soft hat at sight of her, she 
saw his forehead was bald and that he wore 
spectacles. Also that there was a sagging stoop 
to his shoulders and the hint of a limp in his 
walk. 

Clive’s twin brother was the last man she 
cared to meet in her present tumultuous frame 
of mind. At best she had never been able to 
bring herself to like him. Yet he had come too 
close now to be avoided without rudeness. 

As he recognized her, Osmun Creede took an 
impulsively eager step forward. 

“Why, Doris!” he exclaimed joyously. “This 
is better luck than I looked for. What on earth 
are you doing at Vailholme? And why are you 


112 


The Inquisition 113 

out here all alone? Doesn't the same moon 
that interests you interest Clive or Vail?” 

“Oh, you’ve come to see Clive?” she asked, 
trying to speak civilly and not to let herself be 
annoyed by the man’s awkward attempts at ban¬ 
ter. 

“Yes,” said Osmun. “He’s stopping with 
Vail till his house gets disinfected or loses the 
reek of some chemicals that made him sick. 
Why he should choose to come here instead of 
to his own brother’s home,” he added bitterly, 
“is a mystery to me. Probably he has his own 
reasons. Anyhow, I came over to see if he is 
better and if there’s anything I can do for him. 
I didn’t ring because I saw through the windows 
that there’s a party of some kind going on. I 
saw a bunch of people in the living room. And 
I’m in tramping clothes. I came around to the 
side door, on the chance of finding a servant I 
could send upstairs to Clive to find how he 
is.” 

“Clive was out here five minutes ago,” she re¬ 
plied. “He went back to the interrogation. 
I’ll—” 

“Interrogation?” repeated Osmun, puzzled. 
“Is it a game? Or—?” 

Briefly she outlined to the dumbfounded man 


114 The Amateur Inn 

the story of the evening’s events. He listened, 
open-mouthed, his face, in the moonlight, blank 
with crass incredulity. The instant she paused 
he began to hurl questions at her. Impatiently 
she answered them. But in their mid-flow she 
turned away and walked to the long window. 

“I’m afraid I must go in,” she said, stiffly, his 
avid curiosity and his evident relish of the affair 
jarring her unaccountably. “They may want to 
interrogate me, too. The chief was going to 
examine us all, I believe. You’ll excuse me?” 

“I’ll do better than that,” he assured her. 
“I’ll come along. I wouldn’t miss this thing for 
a million.” 

Before she could deter him he had stepped 
past her and had flung wide the French window. 
Standing aside, he.motioned her to pass through. 
She hesitated. Chief Quimby, catching sight of 
her on the threshold, beckoned her in. 

“We wondered where you were, Miss Lane,” 
said he. “We’ve been waiting for you. Every 
one else has been questioned. Come in, please.” 

Reluctantly she entered. Osmun Creede 
pressed in, at her heels, closing the window be¬ 
hind him. The guests were seated in various 
parts of the living room, one and all looking 
thoroughly uncomfortable. At a table sat the 


The Inquisition 115 

chief. Beside him, holding an open note book, 
sat the constable. 

Through the doorway Doris could see in the 
hall a flustered group of servants, babbling in 
excited whispers. One woman among them was 
repeating snifflingly at intervals that she was a 
respectable working girl and that never before 
in her life had any one asked her such a passel of 
turrible questions and she was going to pack up 
and leave right away and she’d have the law 
on them that had asked was she a thief! 

Quimby seemed to note the presence of this 
offstage chorus at the same time as did Doris. 
For he turned to the housekeeper who stood 
primly in a far corner: 

“You can send them back to the kitchen quar¬ 
ters, Mrs. Horoson,” he said. “I’m through 
with them for the present. Only see none of 
them leave the house. Let them understand 
that any one who tries to sneak out will be fol¬ 
lowed and arrested. I shall take it as an indi¬ 
cation of guilt. That is all, Mrs. Horoson. We 
shan’t need you or Vogel any more either. Or 
if we do I’ll ring for you.” 

“Where is Clive?” Osmun asked Willis Chase, 
who had greeted the unpopular twin’s advent 
with the briefest of nods. 


116 


The Amateur Inn 


“Gone up to bed,” answered Chase. “Went 
up as soon as the chief had finished asking him 
a handful of questions. Said he felt rotten. 
Looked it, too. Chief excused him. He has the 
two East rooms, if you want to go up and see 
him.” 

“I shall, presently/’ said Osmun. “This is too 
interesting to leave just yet.” 

He listened to the chief’s few queries of Doris 
as to the discovery that her jewel-box had been 
stolen. Doris replied clearly and to the point, 
her testimony confirming in all details the story 
her aunt had just told. 

The last witness being examined, the lanky 
chief leaned back in his chair beating a tattoo 
on his teeth with the pencil he carried. Then 
he glanced at his notes and again at the inven¬ 
tory on the table before him. 

“I am convinced,” he said slowly, “that all 
you people have told me the truth. And I am 
inclined to believe the servants have done the 
same. Taking into consideration their flurry 
and scare, they told remarkably straight stories, 
and it seems clear that none of them were ab¬ 
sent from their duties in the kitchen or in the 
dining room long enough to have run upstairs 
and robbed so many rooms and then to have got- 


117 


The Inquisition 

ten back unnoticed. It seems none of them 
had even gone up so early to arrange the bed¬ 
rooms for the night. And there is positively no 
sign, outdoors or in, that any professional thief 
broke into the house. Of course, a closer search 
of the rooms and a search of the servants and 
of their quarters—and of yourselves, if you will 
permit—may throw new light on the case. 
But—” 

He paused. On these summer people and on 
others of their clan depended ninety per cent of 
Aura’s livelihood and importance. Quimby had 
tried, therefore, to handle this delicate matter 
in such a way as to avoid offense. And, thus 
far, he had not a ghost of a clue to go on. 

“Search away—as far as I’m concerned,” 
spoke up Willis Chase, in the short pause which 
followed. “Three times, on the Canadian bor¬ 
der, I’ve had my car searched for bootleg booze. 
And every time I hit the New York Customs 
crowd, on my way back from Europe, they 
search my soiled collars and trunkbottoms with 
the most loving care. So this’ll be no novelty. 
Search.” 

“I have a horrible feeling that all the stolen 
things are going to be found on me,” supple¬ 
mented Miss Gregg. “They would be, in a 


118 The Amateur Inn 

nightmare, you know. And if this isn’t a night¬ 
mare I don’t know what nightmare is. But 
search if you like. The sooner it’s over the 
sooner we’ll wake up.” 

“I speak for the good wife as well as for my¬ 
self,” boomed Joshua Q. Mosely, “when I say 
we shall do all in our power to uphold the law. 
We are willing to be searched.” 

He gazed about him with the rarefied air of 
one who has just consented to part with life in 
the holy cause of duty. 

“I am not going to be searched.” 

It was Thaxton Vail who said it. Every one 
turned with something akin to a jump and 
stared marvelingly at him. 

“I am not going to be searched,” he repeated, 
coming forward into the strong glare of lamp¬ 
light beside the table where sat the two officials. 
“And I am not going to permit my guests to be 
searched. When I say ‘my guests,’ I do not 
refer to Mr. and Mrs. Mosely, but to the friends 
whom I have known all my life. They are under 
my roof. They have suffered by being under 
my roof. Neither they nor myself shall be hu¬ 
miliated any further. I’ve listened patiently 
to this comic opera interrogation, and I have 
answered all questions put to me in the course 


The Inquisition 119 

of it. But I’m not going to submit to the tom¬ 
foolery of a search. Please understand that 
clearly, Chief.” 

He sat down again. There was a confused 
rustle throughout the room. Joshua Q. Mosely 
glared at him with fearsome suspicion. Quimby 
cleared his throat, frowning. But before either 
could speak Osmun Creede had come forward 
out of the shadows to the area of light by the 
table. 

“Chief,” he said, his rasping voice cutting the 
room’s looser sounds like a rusty file, “I’m the 
only person here who can’t possibly be connected 
with the thefts. I didn’t get here till five min¬ 
utes ago, and I can prove by a dozen people 
that I was dining at the Country Club at the 
time the things were stolen. So I can speak dis¬ 
interestedly.” 

“What’s the sense of your speaking at all?” 
grumbled Chase. “It’s no business of yours.” 

Unheeding, Osmun proceeded: 

“Chief, you have established that some one 
in this house is a thief. That thief, presumably, 
had to do his work mighty fast and presuma¬ 
bly he had no time to hide all his loot in a 
place safe enough to elude a police hunt. He 
had only a minute or two to do it in. There- 


120 


The Amateur Inn 


fore, the chances are that the bulkier or less 
easily hidden bits of plunder are still concealed 
on him. Perhaps all of it. Very good. It 
would be that man’s natural impulse to resist 
search. Practically every one else here has 
volunteered to submit to search. One man only 
has refused. By an odd coincidence, that hap¬ 
pens also to be the one man who was not 
robbed. Figure it out for yourself. It—” 

“Oz Creede!” Miss Gregg declaimed, as the 
rest still sat dazed into momentary stillness at 
the unbelievable attack. “If you had the re¬ 
motest idea how utterly vile and worthless you 
are, you’d bite yourself and die of hydropho¬ 
bia. ... I just thought I’d mention it,” she 
added, apologetically, to Doris. 

But Doris did not hear. The girl’s glowing 
teyes were on Thaxton Vail, who had sprung to 
his feet and was advancing on his accuser. 

“Oz,” said Vail, his voice muffled and not 
quite firm, “I promised your brother I’d forget 
I had any grievance against you. May I trouble 
you to leave here before I forget that promise? 
—As quickly as you can, please.” 

“Hold on there!” blustered Joshua Q., billow¬ 
ing forward. “Hold on there! There seems to 
me to be a lot in what this young feller says. 


121 


The Inquisition 

He talks sense, Mr. Vail. And I believe he’s 
right. This is no time to go trying to carry 
things highhanded. Chief, I demand—” 

He broke off short in the rolling utterances, 
his mouth ajar, his little eyes bulging. Osmun 
Creede and Vail stood confronting each other. 
With a gesture as swift as the strike of a rattle¬ 
snake Osmun thrust out his right hand toward 
the left waistcoat pocket of Vail’s dinner clothes. 

Now he withdrew the questing hand and was 
holding it open for all to gaze on. In its palm 
glowed dully a huge old hunting-case watch. 

“I caught sight of a bulge in that pocket,” he 
rasped. “So I took a chance at a search on my 
own account. Now I’ll go. Not because you’ve 
ordered me out, Vail, but because I don’t care 
to stay under the same roof with a man who 
robs his guests. Good-by.” 

His words went unheard in the sudden babble 
of voices and the pressing forward of the rest. 
Every one was talking at once. The chief 
peered, hypnotized, at the watch Osmun had 
laid on the table in front of him. Vail, after a 
moment of stark blankness, lurched furiously 
at Creede, mouthing something which nobody 
could hear in the uproar. 

The constable threw himself between Vail and 


122 The Amateur Inn 

the sardonically smiling man. Before Thaxton 
could break free or recover his self-control 
Creede had left the room. But, in the hallway 
outside, during the moment’s hush which fol¬ 
lowed the clamor, all could hear his strident 
voice as he shouted up the stairs: 

“Clive! Come down here! Come down in a 
rush! The thief’s found!” 

Again Vail took a furious step in pursuit, but 
again the constable stepped officiously in front 
of him. And a second later the front door 
slammed. 

“Stay where you are, everybody!” com¬ 
manded the chief, a new sternness in his voice, 
as Willis Chase succeeded in working his way 
around the constable and Vail and made for the 
hall. “Where are you going, Mr. Chase?” 

“I’m going to catch that swine!” yelled Wil¬ 
lis, wrathfully, over his shoulder, pausing in the 
living room doorway as he cleared the last 
obstacle and sprang toward the hall. “I’m 
going to find him and bring him back by the 
scruff of the neck. And—” 

The constable took a belated step to stop 
him. Chase turned and bolted. But as he did 
so, he collided violently with Clive Creede. 


The Inquisition 123 

Clive had come downstairs at his brother’s 
shouted summons, just in time to receive Chase’s 
catapult rush. 

Under the impact the sick man staggered 
and would have fallen had not Chase caught 
him. At the same time Thaxton Vail called 
sharply: 

“Willis! Come back here! Don’t make a 
fool of yourself! Comeback. I don’t need any 
one to fight my battles for me. I can attend to 
this myself.” 

Apologizing to the breathless Clive for the un¬ 
intended collision and helping to steady the 
shaken man on his feet, Chase abandoned his 
plan to overtake and drag Osmun back by force. 
Sullenly he returned to the living room, Clive 
at his side. To the invalid’s puzzled questions 
he returned no answer. 

As they came in, Quimby was on his feet. 
His deferential manner was gone. The glint of 
the man hunt shimmered beneath his shaggy 
gray brows. 

“Sit down, everybody!” he commanded. 
“Mr. Vail, I said, sit down! This case has taken 
a different turn. Let nobody leave the room. 
Whitcomb,” to the constable, “stand at the door. 


124 The Amateur Inn 

Now then, we’ll tackle all this from another 
angle. The time for kid glove questioning is 
past.” 

He eyed them sternly, his gaze focusing last on 
Thaxton Vail. Then, as silence was restored, 
he picked up the watch and held it toward the 
blinkingly wondering Clive. 


Chapter IX 
A LIE OR TWO 


M R. CREEDE,” said he, “look care¬ 
fully at this watch. Do you recog¬ 
nize it?” 

“Of course I do,” replied Clive. “It’s mine. 
How did—?” 

“This watch, Mr. Creede,” said the chief, 
slowly, “has just been turned over to me by 
your brother.” 

“My brother?” asked Clive, surprised. 

As he spoke his eyes searched the room, peer¬ 
ing into the farther shadows in quest of Osmun. 

“He has gone,” said the chief, reading the 
glance. “But before he went he pulled this 
watch out of the vest pocket of—Mr. Thaxton 
Vail. You admit it is yours. The watch that 
was stolen from your room this evening. There¬ 
fore—” 

“Clive!” broke in Vail. “You know me well 
enough to—” 

“Mr. Vail,” interrupted the chief, “it is my 

duty to warn you that anything you say may be 

125 





126 The Amateur Inn 

used against you. Now, then, Mr. Creede: You 
have identified this watch as the one stolen 
from you. It was taken from Mr. Vail’s pocket 
in the presence of all of us. You can swear to 
the identification?” 

“Hold on, please!” said Clive. “You’re bark¬ 
ing industriously, Chief. But you’re barking up 
the wrong tree. That isn’t the watch I lost.” 

“You said it was!” accused the chief. “You 
said—” 

“I said nothing of the sort,” denied Clive. 
“You asked me if I recognized the watch. And 
I said I did and that it was mine. I didn’t say 
it was the one that was stolen to-night. And it 
isn’t.” 

The house guests—to whom the Argyle watch 
was a familiar object—gasped. Thaxton Vail 
made as though to speak in quick disclaimer. 
But Clive’s tired voice droned on as he met 
Quimby’s suspicious eyes fairly and calmly. 

“This watch is mine. It belonged to my 
father. It was one he had made the year be¬ 
fore he died, with the Argyle watch as a model. 
And a very poor bit of work it was. For it has 
scarcely a look of the original. Last week at 
my Rackrent Farm house Mr. Vail dropped his 
repeater-watch and broke its mainspring. He 


A Lie or Two 127 

sent it to New York to be mended. And I lent 
him this second watch of mine to carry till his 
own comes back. That’s what I meant just 
now when I said I recognized the watch and that 
it is mine.” 

“Clive!” sputtered Vail. “You’re—” 

“If my brother snatched this watch out of 
Mr. Vail’s pocket,” finished Clive, heedless of 
the interruption and with his eyes still holding 
the chief’s, “then he did a mighty impertinent 
thing and one for which I apologize, in his 
name, to my host. That’s all, Chief. The 
Argyle watch is still missing.” 

The stupidly coined lie deceived no one but 
the police, though Doris Lane felt a throb of ad¬ 
miration for the man who thus sought to shield 
his friend. The lie helped to blot from her mem¬ 
ory Clive’s earlier suspicion of Vail. She gave 
eager credit to the way wherein he defended the 
chum in whose guilt he really believed. 

Old Miss Gregg reached out a wrinkled hand 
and patted Creede on the knee much as she 
might have patted the head of Macduff, the 
collie. 

“You’re a good boy, Clive,” she whispered. 
“You always were. And, oh, it’s so infinitely 
better to do good than just to be good! If—” 


128 


The Amateur Inn 


Thaxton Vail’s fierce disclaimer drowned out 
her murmured words of praise. 

“Chief,” declared Vail, “my friend is saying 
all this to protect me. But I don’t need any 
protection. That is the Argyle watch. Though 
how it happened to be in my pocket is more 
than I can guess. That’s the stolen watch. I 
ought to know. I’ve seen it a thousand times 
ever since I was a child. And I never broke a 
repeater-watch at Mr. Creede’s house. I never 
owned a repeater. And I never borrowed any 
watch from him. Also, to the best of my belief, 
his father never had a watch made to order. 
He always carried the Argyle watch, and I never 
heard of his having any other.” 

“Chief,” interposed Clive, very quietly, as 
Vail paused for breath, “I have just told you 
the true story—the story I shall stick to, if nec¬ 
essary, on the witness stand. Please remember 
that. If I say that watch is not the stolen one 
any jury in the world will take my word as to 
my knowledge of my own property. And any 
accusation against Mr. Vail will appear very 
ridiculous. It will not add to your reputation. 
For your own sake I advise you to accept my 
statement at its face value.” 

“Drop that idiocy, Clive!” exhorted Vail 


A Lie or Two 


129 


angrily. “I tell you I don’t need any protec¬ 
tion. And if I did I wouldn’t take it in the 
form of a lie. You mean well. And I’m grate¬ 
ful to you. But—” 

“That’s my story, Chief,” calmly repeated 
Creede. 

* Quimby was looking from one to the other 
of the two men in worried uncertainty. Both 
were rich and influential members of the Aura 
community. Both were lifelong dwellers in the 
region. The word of either, presumably, would 
carry heavy weight in court. Yet each flatly 
contradicted the other. The chief’s brain began 
to buzz. Holding up the watch and facing the 
onlookers he asked: 

“Can any of you identify this watch?” 

No one spoke. Vail glanced from face to 
face. Every visage was either unwontedly pale 
or else unwontedly red. But nobody spoke. 
Clive Creede’s eyes followed Vail’s to the coun¬ 
tenances of the spectators. In his sunken gaze 
was a world of appeal. 

“Miss Gregg!” cried Thaxton at random. 
“You knew Clive’s father for years. You’ve 
seen the Argyle watch ever so often. I call on 
you to identify it.” 

“My dear Thax,” cooed the old lady, placidly, 


130 The Amateur Inn 

“nothing on earth would give me greater joy 
than to identify it—except to identify the 
scoundrel who stole it.” 

“There!” exclaimed Vail, turning in grim tri¬ 
umph to the chief. 

“But,” prattled on the serene old lady, “I’m 
sorry to say I can’t identify it. Because I don’t 
see it. I’m perfectly familiar with the Argyle 
watch. But the Argyle watch is most decidedly 
not the turnip-like timepiece our friend Quimby 
is dangling so seductively before me.” 

Thaxton groaned aloud and sank into his 
chair, his mind awhirl. The chief smiled. 

“That seems to settle it,” he said, briskly. 
“Mr. Vail, you must be mistaken. This cannot 
be the Argyle watch. Two more-than-reputa- 
ble witnesses have just testified most definitely 
to that fact.” 

“I don’t know what conspiracy you people 
are in to save me,” mumbled Vail, glowering 
from the haggard Clive to the smugly smiling 
old lady. “But you wouldn’t do it if you didn’t 
think I am guilty. And that hurts like raw 
vitriol. I—” 

“Don’t be absurd!” chided Miss Gregg. 
“Don’t lose all the little intelligence the Lord 
saw fit to sprinkle into that fatuous brain of 


A Lie or Two 


131 


yours. I’ve known you all your life. I know 
all about you. You’d never receive a Nobel 
prize for anything except cleanness and square¬ 
ness and sportsmanship and kindness. But 
you’re no thief. And every one knows it. So 
stop trying to be pathetic.” 

“But—” 

“Besides,” she continued, in the same re¬ 
proving tone, “nobody but a kleptomaniac ever 
steals without a practical motive. What motive 
have you? Why—!” 

“Motive?” boomed Joshua Q. Mosely. “Mo¬ 
tive, hey? Well, I can’t speak for you people’s 
losses, but Mrs. M.’s stolen joolry was worth 
$12,000, at a low appraisal. That seems to be 
motive enough for a poor dub of a country 
hotelkeeper to—” 

“My good, if loud-mouthed, man,” replied 
Miss Gregg, “Mr. Vail’s annual income is some¬ 
thing in the neighborhood of $200,000, to my 
certain knowledge. If he wanted such jewelry 
as was stolen to-night, he could have bought and 
paid for a three-ton truckload of it. He could 
even have paid present-day prices for enough 
gasoline to run the three-ton truck. What ob¬ 
ject would he have had in sneaking into our 
rooms and purloining little handfuls of gew- 


132 


The Amateur Inn 


gaws? That is one argument which may ap¬ 
peal even to your mighty intellect. He—” 

“But,” gurgled Joshua Q. “But—but hold 
on, ma’am! Is this a funny joke you’re spring¬ 
ing? What would a man with a $200,000 in¬ 
come be doing, running a backwoods tavern like 
this? Tell me that. There’s a catch in this. 
Are the lot of you in the plot to—?” 

“Miss Gregg is right, sir,” said the chief, who, 
like the rest of the community, stood in chronic 
fear of the eccentrically powerful old dame. 
“And there’s no need to use ugly words like 
‘plot,’ when you’re speaking to a lady like her. 
Mr. Vail’s income is estimated at not less than 
$200,000, just as she’s told you. As for his 
running a tavern or a hotel, he doesn’t. This 
is his estate, inherited from the late Mr. Osmun 
Vail. I read in the paper, yesterday, that a 
clause of the will of Mr. Osmun Vail makes him 
keep a part of the house open, if necessary, as 
an inn. Whether or not that’s true, or just a 
newspaper yarn, I don’t know. But I do know 
that Mr. Vail could have no financial reason 
for stealing jewelry or small rolls of bills or 
cheap watches.” 

He spoke with the pride of locality, in im¬ 
pressing an outlander with a neighbor’s impor- 


A Lie or Two 


133 


tance. Thaxton Vail, thoroughly uncomforta¬ 
ble, had tried in vain, once or twice, to stem the 
tide of the chief’s eloquence and that of the old 
lady. Now he sat, silent, eyes down, face 
red. 

Joshua Q. Mosely arose and came closer, 
staring at the embarrassed youth as if at some 
new-discovered specimen. His wife fluttered 
and wiggled, eyeing Vail as she might have eyed 
a stage hero. 

“Well, I’m sure,” she said, mincingly, “that 
puts a new turn on everything. Quite a roman¬ 
tic—” 

“Luella,” decreed her husband, breathing 
hard through his nose, “I guess we’ve made 
fools of ourselves, horning in here, to-day. Just 
the same,” he went on, scourged by memory of 
his loss, “that don’t clear up who stole our 
joolry. Nor yet it don’t give our joolry back 
to us. And those two things are more important 
just now than whether Mr. Vail is a multimil¬ 
lionaire or not.” 

“Quite so,” agreed the chief. “We don’t 
seem to be getting much further in the case. 
Since Mr. Vail objects to being searched and 
objects to his guests being searched—well, I 
have no warrant to search them. But I take it 


The Amateur Inn 


134 

there’s no objection to my searching the house, 
once more—especially the servants’ quarters 
and all that?” 

“None at all,” said Vail. “Ring for Horoson. 
She’ll show you around.” 

“I guess I and Mrs. M. will turn in,” said 
Mosely, “if we’re not needed any longer. We’re 
pretty tired, the both of us. Came all the way 
through from Manchester since sunrise, you 
know. And we’ve got to be off first thing in the 
morning. Chief, I’ll stop in at the police station 
on my way to-morrow and leave our address and 
post a reward. G’night, all.” 

He and his wife departed to the upper regions, 
gabbling together in low, excited tones as they 
went. The housekeeper appeared, in answer to 
Vail’s ring. The chief and the constable strode 
off in her indignant wake to make their tour 
of inspection. 

“I wish,” said Willis Chase, vindictively, “I 
wish those Mosely persons and that road-com¬ 
pany police chief could be made to take turns 
occupying the magenta room. That’s the worst 
I can wish any one. I—” 

“Clive, old chap!” exclaimed Vail, wheeling 
on Creede as soon as the policemen’s footsteps 
died away. “Why in blazes did you tell such a 



A Lie or Two 135 

thundering lie? And, as for you, Miss 
Gregg—! ” 

“Young man/’ interrupted the spinster, with 
great severity, “I knew you when you were in 
funny kilt skirts and when you wore your hair 
roached on top and in silly little ringlets at the 
back, and when you couldn’t spell ‘cat.’ If you 
think I’m going to tolerate a scolding from you 
or going to let you call me to account for any¬ 
thing at all you’re greatly mistaken.” 

“But—” 

“Besides,” she went on, relaxing, “suppose I 
did tell a lie? For heaven’s sake, what is a lie? 
That weasel of a Reuben Quimby had no more 
right to the contents of my brain than to the 
contents of my safe. A person who is not 
ashamed to lock a door with a key need not be 
ashamed to lock his mind with a lie.” 

“Aunt Hester!” cried Doris, quite horrified. 

“Not that I excuse foolish and unnecessary 
lies, my dear,” explained her aunt. “They are 
ill-bred, and they spoil one’s technique for the 
few really needful lies.” 

Then, feeling she had averted for the mo¬ 
ment Vail’s angry condemnation of her false¬ 
hood, she shifted the subject once more. 

“Clive!” she ordained. “Go to bed. You 


136 


The Amateur Inn 


look like the hero of a Russian problem novel. 
One of those ghastly faced introspectives with 
influenza names, who needn’t bother to spend 
money in getting their hair cut; because they 
are going to commit suicide in another chapter 
or so anyhow. You look positively dead. This 
has been too much for you. Go to bed, my dear 
boy. And thank you for restoring my faith in 
boykind a few minutes ago by lying so truth¬ 
fully.” 

Clive got to his feet, wavering, his face set in 
a mask of illness. He turned to Thaxton Vail 
and held out his hand. To Doris there seemed 
in the action an assurance of loyalty. To Vail 
the proffer savored of the dramatic—as if, be¬ 
lieving his friend guilty, Creede was none the 
less willing to shake his hand. 

“Clive,” said Vail, coldly, ignoring the ges¬ 
ture, “if you think I’m a thief I don’t want to 
shake hands with you. If you don’t think I’m a 
thief there’s no need in shaking hands in that 
melodrama fashion. Good night. Need any 
help to get upstairs?” 

“No, thanks,” returned Creede, wincing at 
the rebuff. “I—” 

He finished the sentence by toppling over in 
a dead faint at his host’s feet. 


A Lie or Two 


137 


Instantly Vail and Chase were working over 
him, loosening his collar and belt, and lifting his 
arms on high so that the blood might flow back 
into the heart. Miss Gregg dived into the re¬ 
cesses of the black bead handbag she always 
carried on her wrist. From it she exhumed an 
ounce vial of smelling salts. 

“Here!” she said. “Let me put this under 
his nostrils. It’s as strong as the Moral Law 
and almost as rank. The poor boy! He— 
Drat this cork! It’s jammed in. Got a cork¬ 
screw?” 

Thaxton paused long enough in his work of 
resuscitation to take from his hip pocket the big 
German army knife which Clive had brought 
him from overseas. 

“Here!” he said, opening the corkscrew and 
handing the knife to her. 

“What a barbarous contraption!” commented 
Miss Gregg, as she strove to extract the cork 
from her smelling-bottle. “How do you happen 
to be carrying it in your dinner clothes?” 

“I stuck it into my pocket, along with my 
cash, when I changed, I suppose,” said Vail, as 
he worked. “I was in a rush, and I—” 

“That’s a murderous-looking thing on the 
back of it,” she went on, as she finished drawing 



The Amateur Inn 


138 

the cork and laid the knife on the table. “It 
looks like the business-half of a medieval 
poniard.” 

“That’s a punch, of some sort,” he answered 
absently. “Got the smelling salts ready yet?” 

“He’s coming around!” announced Chase, as 
Miss Gregg knelt beside the unconscious man to 
apply the bottle to his pinched nostrils. “See, 
his eyes are opening.” 

Clive Creede blinked, shivered, then stared 
foolishly about. At sight of the faces bending 
above him he frowned and essayed weakly to 
sit up. 

“I—surely I wasn’t such a baby as to keel 
over, was—was I?” he panted, thickly. 

“Don’t try to talk!” begged Doris. “You’re 
all right now. It’s been too much for you. Let 
Thax and Willis help you up to bed. Auntie, 
don’t you think we ought to telephone for Dr. 
Lawton?” 

“No,” begged Clive, his voice somewhat less 
wobbly. “Please don’t. A good night’s rest 
will set me up. I’m ashamed to have—” 

“Don’t waste breath in talking, old man!” 
put in Vail. “I’m a rotten host, to have let you 
have all this strain when you were sick. Don’t 
go struggling to get up. Lie still. So!” 



A Lie or Two 


139 


Deftly he passed his arms under the pros¬ 
trate man’s knees and shoulders. Then, with 
a bracing of his muscles, he lifted Clive from 
the floor. 

“Go ahead, and open the door of his bed¬ 
room,” he bade Chase. “I’ll carry him up.” 

“No!” protested Clive, struggling. “I—” 

“Quiet, please,” said Vail. “It’ll be easy to 
carry you, but not if you squirm. Gangway!” 


Chapter X 
A CRY IN THE NIGHT 


D ORIS LANE followed him with her ad¬ 
miring gaze, noting how lightly he bore 
the invalid and with what tenderness he over¬ 
rode Creede’s petulant remonstrances. 

“Yes,” said Miss Gregg, as though answering 
a question voiced by her niece. “Yes, he is 
splendidly strong. And he’s gentle, too. A 
splendid combination—for a husband. I mean, 
for one’s own husband. It is thrown away, in 
another woman’s.” 

“I don’t understand you at all,” rebuffed 
Doris. 

“No? Well, who am I, to scold you for deny¬ 
ing it, just after my longwinded lecture on the 
virtues of lying?” 

“Auntie,” said the girl, speaking in feverish 
haste in her eagerness to shift the subject, 
“have you any idea at all who committed the 
robberies? Have you?” 

“Yes,” returned the old lady, with no hesi¬ 
tation at all. “I know perfectly well who did 
it.” 


140 


A Cry in the Night 141 

“You do!” 

“I haven’t an atom of doubt. It was Osmun 
Creede.” 

“Why, Auntie, it couldn’t have been! It 
couldn't!” 

“I know that. I know it as well as you. Just 
the same, I believe he did.” 

“But he wasn’t even here!” urged the girl. 
“You heard what he said about having dined at 
the Country Club, and that a dozen people there 
could prove it.” 

“Yes,” assented Miss Gregg. “I heard him.” 

“You don’t believe him?” 

“Yes. I believe him implicitly. For nobody 
would want to testify in Osmun Creede’s behalf 
who didn’t have to. He knows that as well as 
we do. So if he says a dozen people can prove 
he was there, he’s telling the truth. He’d like 
nothing better than to bother those people into 
admitting they saw him there. Especially if 
they could send him to jail by denying it. Oh, 
he was there, fast enough, at the Country Club 
while the rooms here were being looted. I be¬ 
lieve that.” 

“Then how could he have done the robbing?” 
insisted the girl, sore perplexed. 

“I don’t know,” admitted her aunt. “In fact, 


142 The Amateur Inn 

I suppose he couldn’t. But I’m equally certain 
he did.” 

“But what makes you think so?” 

“What makes me know so?” amended Miss 
Gregg. “You’re a woman. And yet you ask 
that! Are you too young to have the womanly 
vice of intuition—the freak faculty that tells 
you a thing is true, even when you know it can’t 
be? Osmun Creede stole our jewelry. I know 
it, for a number of reasons. The first and great¬ 
est reason is because I don’t like Osmun Creede. 
The second and next greatest reason is that Os¬ 
mun Creede doesn’t like me . A third reason is 
that there’s positively nothing too contemptible 
for Osmun Creede to do. He cumbers the 
earth! I do wish some one would put him out of 
our way. Take my word, he stole—” 

“Isn’t that rather ridiculous?” gravely asked 
Doris, from the lofty wisdom of twenty-two 
years. 

“Of course it is. Most real things are. Is it 
half as ridiculous as for Thaxton Vail to have 
the stolen Argyle w T atch in his pocket when it 
couldn’t possibly be there? Is it?” 

“I—I can’t understand that, myself,” con¬ 
fessed Doris. “But—” 

“But you know it’s somehow all right? Be- 


A Cry in the Night 143 

cause you trust Thax. Precisely. Well, I 
can’t understand how Oz Creede could have com¬ 
mitted the robberies when he wasn’t here. But 
I know he did. Because I distrust him. If it 
comes down to logic, mine is as good as 
yours.” 

“But,” urged Doris, giving up the unequal 
struggle, “why should he do such a thing? He 
is well off. He doesn’t need the things that 
were stolen. That was your argument to prove 
Thax didn’t steal them. Besides, with all the 
horrid things about him, nobody’s ever had 
reason to doubt that Osmun is as honest as the 
day.” 

“Honest as the day!” scoffed Miss Gregg. 
“You’re like every one else. You get your 
similes from books written by people who don’t 
know any more than you do.* ‘Honest as the 
day?’ Do you know that only four days, out of 
three hundred and sixty-five, are honest? On 
the four solstices the time of day agrees abso¬ 
lutely with the sun. And on not one other day 
of them all. Then a day promises to be lovely 
and fair, and it lures one out into it in clothes 
that will run and with no umbrella. Up comes 
a rain, as soon as one is far enough from home 
to get nicely caught in it. ‘Honest as the day!’ 


144 The Amateur Inn 

The average day is an unmitigated swindler! 
Why—” 

The return of Vail and Chase from their task 
of getting Clive to bed interrupted the homily. 

“He seems all right now,” reported Willis. 
“He’s terribly broken up, though, at having 
fainted. And he’s as ashamed as if he’d been 
caught stealing pennies from a blind beggar.” 

“He needn’t be,” snapped Miss Gregg. “If 
I’d had to be Oz Creede’s twin brother as long a 
time as Clive has, I’d be too inured to feel 
shame for anything short of burning an orphan¬ 
age. Just the same, he’s a dear boy, Clive is. 
I like the way he came to the front, this eve¬ 
ning, when—” 

“We’ve been clear through the house, from 
cellar to garret,” announced the chief, from the 
doorway. “And we’ve been all around it from 
the outside with flashlights. Not a clue.” 

“Behold an honest cop!” approved Chase. 
“One who’ll admit he hasn’t a dozen mysterious 
clues up his sleeve! It’s a record!” 

“I’m going back to the station now,” resumed 
Quimby, ignoring him, “to write my report. 
There’s nothing more I can do to-night. I’ll be 
around, of course, the first thing in the morning. 
I’ve thrown the fear of the Lord into the whole 


145 


A Cry in the Night 

staff of servants. They won’t dare budge till I 
get back. No danger of one of them confusing 
things by leaving on the sly.” 

Vail followed the two officers to the front 
door and watched them climb into their rattling 
car and make off down the drive. As they dis¬ 
appeared, he wished he had asked the chief to 
leave his man on guard outside the house for the 
night. 

The mystery of the thefts and the evening’s 
later complications had gotten on Vail’s nerves. 
If the supposedly secure rooms could be plun¬ 
dered by a mysterious robber when a score of 
people were awake, in and around the building, 
could not the same robber return to complete his 
work when all the house should be sleeping and 
unguarded? 

Thaxton’s worries found themselves centering 
about Doris Lane. If the intruder should alarm 
her at dead of night—! 

“Mac,” he said under his breath to the collie 
standing at his side on the veranda. “You’re 
going to do real guard duty to-night. I’m going 
to post you at the foot of the stairs, and there I 
want you to stay. No comfy snoring on the 
front door mat this time. You’ll lie at the foot 
of the stairs where you can catch every sound 


146 The Amateur Inn 

and where you can block any one who may try 
to go up or down. Understand that, old boy?” 

Macduff did not understand. All he knew 
was that Vail was talking to him and that some 
sort of response was in order. Wherefore the 
collie wagged his plumed tail very emphatically 
indeed and thrust his cold nose affectionately 
into Thaxton’s cupped hand. 

Vail turned back into the house, Macduff at 
his heels. He locked the front door, prepara¬ 
tory to making a personal inspection of every 
ground floor door and window. As he entered 
the front hall he encountered Doris Lane. 

The girl had left her aunt in the living room, 
listening with scant patience to a ramblingly 
told theory of Chase’s as to how best the stolen 
goods might be traced. Doris had slipped 
away to bed, leaving them there. She was very 
tired and her nerves were not at their best. The 
evening had been an ordeal for her—severe and 
prolonged. 

“Going to turn in?” asked Vail as they met. 

“Yes,” she made listless reply. “I’m a bit 
done up. I didn’t realize it till a minute ago. 
Good night.” 

“Excuse me,” he said uncomfortably, “but 


A Cry in the Night 147 

have you and Miss Gregg got a gun of any sort 
with you in your luggage?” 

“Why, no P ” she said. “We don’t own such a 
thing between us. Auntie won’t have a pistol in 
the house. It’s a whim of hers.” 

“So you go unprotected, just for a woman’s 
whim?” 

“You don’t know Aunt Hester. She is a 
woman of iron whim,” said Doris with tired flip¬ 
pancy. “So we live weaponless. We—” 

“Then—just as a favor to a crotchety host 
whose own nerves are jumpy on your account 
—won’t you take this upstairs with you and 
keep it handy, alongside your bed? Please do.” 

He had gone to the Sheraton lowboy which 
did duty as a hall table. From the bottom of 
one of its drawers he took a small-caliber re¬ 
volver. 

“I keep this here as a balm to Horoson’s feel¬ 
ings,” he explained. “Out in the hills, like this, 
she’s always quite certain we’ll be attacked some 
day by brigands or Black Handers or some other 
equally mythical foes. And it comforts her to 
know there’s a pistol in the hall. Take it, 
please.” 

“What nonsense!” she laughed—and there 


148 The Amateur Inn 

was a tinge of nerve-fatigue in the laugh. “Of 
course I shan’t take it. Why should I?” 

“Just to please me, if there’s no better rea¬ 
son/’ he begged. 

“I’m afraid you’ll have to think up some bet¬ 
ter reason/’ she said stubbornly. “I refuse to 
make myself ludicrous by carrying an arsenal 
to bed, to please you or any one else, Thax. If 
you’re really timid I suggest you cling to the 
pistol, yourself.” 

It was a catty thing to say; and she knew it 
was, before the words were fairly spoken. But 
she was weary. And, perversely, she resented 
and punished her own thrill of happiness that 
Vail should be so concerned for her safety. 

The man flushed. But he set his lips and said 
nothing. Dropping the pistol back into the 
open drawer, he prepared to join the two others 
in the library. But the nerve-exhausted girl 
was vexed at his failure to resent her slur. And, 
like an over-tired child, she turned pettish. 

“I’m sure you’ll be safe,” she said, in affected 
jocosity, “if you’ll push your bed and your chif¬ 
fonier against your door and see that all your 
bedroom windows are fast locked. Or you 
might room with Willis Chase. He has plenty 
of pluck. He’ll protect you.” 


A Cry in the Night 149 

Unexpectedly Vail went up to her and took 
tight hold of both her hands, resisting her peev¬ 
ish efforts to pull them free. 

“Listen to me,” he said in a maddeningly 
parental fashion. “You’re a naughty and dis¬ 
agreeable and cross little girl, and you ought to 
have your fingers spatted and be stood in a 
corner. I’m ashamed of you. Now run off to 
bed before you say anything else cranky;you— 
you bad kid!” 

She fought to jerk her hands away from his 
exasperatingly paternal hold. In doing so she 
bruised one of her fingers against the seal ring 
he wore. The hurt completed the wreck of 
her self-control which humiliation had under¬ 
mined. * 

“Let go of my hands!” she stormed. “You 
haven’t proved to-night that your own are any 
too clean.” 

On the instant he dropped her fingers as if 
they were white hot. His face went scarlet, 
then gray. 

“Oh!” she stammered, in belated horror of 
what she had said. “Oh, I didn’t mean that! 
Thax, honestly I didn’t! I—” 

Miss Gregg and Chase came out into the hall 
as she was still speaking—as she was still look- 


The Amateur Inn 


150 

ing appealingly up into the hurt face of the man 
she had affronted so grievously. 

“Come, dear!” hailed the old lady. “It’s al¬ 
most as late as it ever gets to be. Let’s go to 
bed.” 

“Good night,” said Thaxton, stiffly, ignoring 
Doris’s eyes and setting off on his round of the 
windows. 

Doris lagged a step after her aunt. Willis 
Chase made as though to speak lightly to her. 
Then he caught the look on her remorseful face, 
glanced quickly toward the back of the depart¬ 
ing Vail, and, with a hasty good night to her, 
made his way upstairs. On the landing he 
turned and called back to Thaxton: 

“If I can't live through the horrors of the 
magenta room to-night, Thax, I hope they send 
you to the hoosgow, as contributory cause. Me, 
I wouldn’t even coop up Oz Creede in a room 
like that.” 

Vail made no reply. Stolidly he continued to 
lock window after window, Macduff pacing along 
behind him with an air of much importance. 
Doris Lane took an impulsive step to follow 
him. But Chase was still leaning over the banis¬ 
ters, above, chanting his plaint about the ma¬ 
genta room. So she sighed and went up to bed. 


A Cry in the Night 151 

Less than five minutes later, when Thaxton 
returned to the hallway, his guests had all re¬ 
tired. There was an odd air of desolation and 
gloom about the usually homelike hall. Vail 
stood there a moment, musing. Then, subcon¬ 
sciously, he noted that the lowboy drawer still 
stood open. In absentminded fashion he went 
over to close it. 

He paused for a moment or so, with his hand 
on the open drawer. 

“Mac,” he muttered, his other hand on the 
collie’s head, “she didn’t mean that. She didn’t 
mean it, Mac. And I’m a fool to let it get past 
my guard and sting so deep. She was worn out 
and nervous. We won’t let it hurt us, will we, 
Mac? Still I wish she’d taken the gun. So far 
as I know it’s the only real weapon of any kind 
in the house. And if there’s danger, I wish she 
had it beside her. I—I wonder if I should carry 
it upstairs and knock at the door. Perhaps I 
could coax Miss Gregg to take it, Mac. What 
do you think?” 

Putting his disjointed words into action, Vail 
fumbled in the drawer for the pistol. 

It was not there. 

He yanked the drawer wider open and groped 
among its heterogeneous contents. Then impa- 


152 


The Amateur Inn 


tiently he began tossing those contents to the 
floor. A pair of crumpled and stained riding 
gauntlets, an old silk cap, wadded into a corner, 
a dog-leash without a snapper, odds and ends of 
string, a muffler, a pack of dog-eared cards, a 
broken box of cartridges. But no pistol. 

The revolver was gone, unmistakably gone— 
taken from its hiding place, during the past five 
minutes. 

Thaxton went through his pockets on the 
bare chance he might have stuck the pistol into 
one of them, although he remembered with en¬ 
tire clearness that he had dropped it back into 
the drawer. 

Subconsciously, the thought of weapons lin¬ 
gered in his mind. He felt in his hip pocket for 
the big army knife. It was not there. 

Then he remembered the use it had been put 
to in drawing the cork of the vial of smelling 
salts. And he went back into the living room, 
on the chance he might have left the knife lying 
on floor or table. But he could not find it. 

“Mac,” he confided to the collie—for, like 
many lonely men, he had grown to talk some¬ 
times to his dog as if to a fellow-human—“Mac, 
all this doesn’t make any kind of a hit with us, 
does it? Up to to-day this was the dearest old 


A Cry in the Night 15^ 

house on earth. Since this afternoon it’s 
haunted. That gun, for instance! The front 
door was locked, Mac. Nobody could have 
come in from the kitchen quarters, for the baize 
door is bolted. Nobody could have gotten into 
the house, this past five minutes. And every 
one in the house except you and me has gone 
to bed, Mac. Yet some one has frisked my 
gun out of that drawer. And the big knife 
seems to have melted, too. What’s the answer, 
Mac?” 

Naturally the collie, as usual, did not under¬ 
stand the sense of one word in twenty. Yet the 
frequent repetitions of his own name made him 
wag his plumed tail violently. And the subnote 
of worried unhappiness in Thaxton’s voice made 
him look up in quick solicitude into the man’s 
clouded face. For dogs read the voice as ac¬ 
curately as humans read print. 

Thaxton petted the classic head, spoke a 
pleasant word to the collie and then switched 
off all the lights except one burner in the front 
of the hall and a reading lamp in his study 
across from the dining room. After which he 
bade Macduff lie down at the foot of the stairs 
and to remain there. 

Up the steps Vail made his way. At his own 


jl54 The Amateur Inn 

room he paused. Then with a half-smile he 
went along the corridor to a door at the far end 
of an ell. He knocked lightly at this. 

“Come in!” grumbled Willis Chase. 

Vail obeyed the summons, entering the stuffy 
little magenta room with its kitchen smell and 
its slanting low ceiling pierced by a single tiny 
window. Chase had thrown off coat and waist¬ 
coat and his tight boots. He had thrust his feet 
luxuriously into a pair of loose tennis shoes he 
had worn during their muddy tramp that after¬ 
noon. He was adding to the room’s breathless¬ 
ness by smoking a cigarette as he riffled the 
leaves of a magazine he had taken from his bag. 

“What’s up?” he asked as his host came in. 

“I think you’ve had a big enough dose of 
medicine,” said Vail. “You needn’t sleep in 
this hole of a clothes-closet. Take my bedroom 
for the night. To-morrow I’ll have Horoson fix 
a decent room for you. Scratch your night 
things together. Never mind about moving all 
your luggage. That can wait till morning. 

“I’m to share your room with you, eh?” 
asked Chase ungratefully. “Thanks, I’ll stay in 
this dump here. I’d as soon share a bed with a 
scratching collie pup as with another man. 
You’d snore and you’d kick about and—” 


A Cry in the Night 155 

“Probably I should,” admitted Thaxton. 
“But I shan’t. Because I shan’t be there. I 
didn’t ask you to share my room but to take it. 
I’m bunking in my study for the night.” 

“To give me a chance to sleep in a real room? 
That’s true repentance. I can almost forgive 
you for the time you’ve made me stay in this 
magenta chamber of horrors. But just the 
same I’m not going to turn you out of your own 
pleasant quarters. I’ll swap, if you like, and 
let you have this highly desirable magenta room. 
Then your nose will tell you what we’re going 
to have for breakfast before the rest of us are 
awake.” 

“I say I’m going to bunk on the leather couch 
in my study,” insisted Vail. “There are a whole 
lot of things I don’t like about this evening’s 
happenings. And I’m going to stand guard—or 
sleep guard—along with Mac. You know the 
way to my room. Go over there as soon as you 
want to. Good night.” 

“Hold on!” urged Chase. “Suppose I spell 
you, on this nocturnal vigil business? We can 
take turns guarding; if you really think there’s 
any need. Personally I think it’s a bit like lock¬ 
ing the cellar door after the booze is gone. 
But—” 


156 


The Amateur Inn 


“No, thanks. No use in both of us losing a 
full night’s sleep. Take my room, and—” 

“Just as you like. I’ve the heart of a lion 
and the soul of a paladin and the ruthlessness 
of an income tax man. But all those grand 
qualities crumple at the chance of getting away 
from the magenta room for the night. Thanks, 
a lot. I’d as soon swig homemade hootch as 
stay a night in this dump. The kind of hootch 
that people make by recipe and offer to their 
guests the same evening. They forget rum isn’t 
built in a day. I—” 

“By the way,” interrupted Vail as he started 
for the door, “you don’t happen to have a pistol, 
do you?” 

Perhaps it was the uncertain light which 
made him fancy a queer expression flitted 
swiftly across Willis Chase’s eyes. But, glibly, 
laughingly, the guest made answer: 

“A pistol? Why, of course not! What’d be 
the sense in packing a gun here in the peaceful 
Berkshires? Thax, this burglar flurry has made 
you melodramatic. Good night, old man. 
Don’t snore too loudly over your sentry duty.” 

Vail departed for the study while Chase 
stuffed an armful of clothes into a handbag and 
made his way along the dark hall to Thaxton’s 


A Cry in the Night 157 

bedroom. At the stair-foot Vail all but stumbled 
over the collie. Then, refusing the dog’s eagerly 
mute plea to accompany him into the study, he 
whispered: 

“No, no, Mac! Lie down! Stay there on 
guard! Stay there!” 

With a grunt of disappointment Macduff 
slumped down again at the foot of the stairs. 
Head between white paws, he lay looking wist¬ 
fully after the departing man. 

The night wore on. 

Perhaps half an hour before the first dim gray 
tinged the sentinel black summit of old South 
Mountain to northwestward, the deathly silence 
of the sleeping house was broken by a low whis¬ 
tling cry—a sound not loud enough nor long 
enough to rouse any slumberer—scarce audible 
to human ears not tensely listening. 

Yet to the keen hearing of Macduff as he 
drowsed at the stairfoot the sound was vividly 
distinct. The collie reared himself excitedly to 
his feet. Then, remembering Thaxton Vail’s 
stern command to stay there on guard, the dog 
hesitated. Mute, statuelike, attentive, he stood, 
his teeth beginning to glint from up-curling lips, 
his hackles abristle. 

Macduff was listening now, listening with all 


The Amateur Inn 


158 

that uncanny perception which lurks in the ear¬ 
drums of a thoroughbred dog. He whined softly 
under his breath at what he heard. And he 
trembled to dash in the direction of the sound. 
But Vail’s mandate held him where he was. 

Presently a new sense allied itself to his hear¬ 
ing. His miraculously keen nostrils flashed to 
his brain the presence of an odor which would 
have been imperceptible to any human but 
which carried its own unmistakable meaning to 
the thoroughbred collie. 

Perhaps, too, there came to him, as sometimes 
to dogs, a strange perception that was neither 
sound nor smell nor sight—something no psy¬ 
chologist has ever explained, but which every 
close student of dogs can verify. 

The trembling changed to a shudder. Up 
went Macduff’s pointed muzzle, skyward. From 
his shaggy throat issued an unearthly wolf-howl. 

Again and again that weird scream rang 
through the house; banishing sleep and reecho¬ 
ing in hideous cadences from every nook and 
corner and rafter. A hundredfold more com¬ 
pelling than any mere fanfare of barking, it 
shrieked an alarm to every slumbering brain. 

In through the open front doorway from the 
veranda rushed Thaxton Vail. 


A Cry in the Night 159 

“Mac!” he cried. “Shut up! What’s the 
matter?” 

For answer the collie danced frantically, 
peering up the stairway and then beseechingly 
back at Vail. No dogman could have failed to 
interpret the plea. 

“All right,” vouchsafed Thaxton. “Go!” 

Like a furry whirlwind the dog scurried up 
the stairs into the regions of the house which 
had been so silent but whence now came the 
murmur of startledly questioning voices and the 
slamming of doors. 

Forced on by a nameless fear, Vail ran up, 
three steps at a time, in the dog’s wake. He 
reached the second floor, just as two or three of 
his guests, in the sketchiest attire, came stum¬ 
bling out into the broad upper hall. 

At sight of Thaxton on the dim-lit landing 
they broke into a clamor of questions. For re¬ 
ply Vail pressed the light switch, throwing the 
black spaces into brilliant illumination. Then 
his glance fell on Macduff. 

The collie had halted his headlong run just 
outside a door at the head of the hall. At the 
oaken panels of this he was tearing madly with 
claws and teeth. 

As Vail hurried to him, the dog ceased his 


160 


The Amateur Inn 


frantic efforts; as though aware that the man 
could open the door more easily than could he. 
And again he tossed his muzzle aloft, making 
the house reverberate to that hideously keening 
wolf-howl. 

The hall was full of jabbering and gesticu¬ 
lating people, clad in night clothes. Vail pushed 
through them to the door at which Mac had 
clamored. It was the door of Thaxton’s own 
bedroom. He turned the knob rattlingly. The 
door was locked. The others crowded close, 
wildly questioning, getting in one another’s way. 

Vail stepped back, colliding with Clive Creede 
and Joshua Q. Mosely. Then, summoning all 
his strength, he hurled himself at the door. The 
stout oak and the oldfashioned lock held firm. 

Thaxton stepped back again, his muscular 
body compact. And a second time he crashed 
his full weight at the panels. Under the cata¬ 
pult impact the lock snapped. 

The door burst open, flinging Vail far into the 
dense blackness. Clive Creede, close behind 
him, groped for the light switch just inside the 
threshold and pressed it, flooding the room with 
light. 

There was an instant of blank hush. Then 
Mrs. Mosely screamed, shrilly, in mortal terror. 


Chapter XI 

WHAT LAY BEYOND THE SMASHED DOOR 


D R. EZRA LAWTON had come home an 
hour earlier from enacting the trying role 
of Stork’s Assistant. He had sunk to sleep 
wearily and embarked at once on a delightful 
dream of his unanimous election as Chairman 
of the Massachusetts State Medical Board. 

All Aura, apparently, celebrated this dream 
election. For the three church bells were ring¬ 
ing loudly in honor of it. There were also a few 
thousand other bells which had been imported 
from somewhere for the occasion. The result 
was a continuous loud jangle which was as deaf- 
eningly annoying to the happy old doctor as it 
was gratifying. 

Presently annoyance got the better of gratifi¬ 
cation and he awoke. But even though his 
beautiful dream had departed the multiple bell¬ 
ringing kept noisily on. And with a groan he 
realized the racket emanated from the telephone 
at his bedside. 

“Well,” he snarled, vicious with dead sleepi- 

161 


162 The Amateur Inn 

ness, as he lifted the receiver, “what the devil 
do you want?” 

He listened for a second, then said in a far 
different voice: 

“Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Gregg. I 
didn’t guess it was you. Nothing the matter, I 
hope?” he added, as though elderly spinsters 
were in the habit of calling him up at three in 
the morning when nothing was the matter. 

Again, this time much longer, he listened. 
Then he ejaculated: 

“Good Lord! Oh, good Lord!” 

The genuine horror in his voice waked wide 
his slumbrous wife. By dint of thirty years as 
a country doctor’s spouse Mrs. Lawton had 
schooled herself to doze peacefully through the 
nocturnal telephone ringing and three a. m. 
Smalltalk which fringed her busy husband’s 
career. 

Mrs. Lawton sat bolt upright in bed. Her 
husband was listening once more. Through the 
dark his wife could hear the scratchedly buzzy 
tones of Miss Gregg, desiccated and attenuated 
by reason of the faulty connection. But, try as 
she would, she could catch no word. At last 
Lawton spoke again, the hint of horror still in 
his voice: 


Beyond the Smashed Door 163 

“I’ll start over as soon as I can get dressed, 
Miss Gregg. You’ve notified the police, of 
course? Huh? Well, do, at once. I’ll be right 
there.” 

He hung up the receiver and floundered out 
of bed. 

What’s the matter?” cried his wife. “What’s 
happened? What’s she want you for? What’s 
that about the police? What’s wrong? Why 
is she—?” 

“Young Willis Chase has been murdered,” re¬ 
plied the doctor, wriggling into his scarce-cooled 
clothes. Found dead in bed, with a knifeblade 
sticking into his right carotid.” 

“Oh! OH!” babbled Mrs. Lawton. “Oh, it 
isn’t possible , Ezra! Who—who did it?” 

“The murderer neglected to leave his card,” 
snapped the doctor. “At least Miss Gregg didn’t 
mention it. . . . Where in hell’s hot hinges is 
my other shoe?” 

“But what was he doing at Miss Gregg’s? 
How did it happen? Who—” 

“It wasn’t at Miss Gregg’s. It was at Vail- 
holme. Houseparty, I gather. Thax Vail’s dog 
woke them all up by howling and then ran to 
Chase’s room. They broke the door in. Chase 
was lying there stone dead with a knife in his 


164 


The Amateur Inn 


throat. And—it was that big German army 
knife Thax showed us one day. Remember it? 
About a million blades. One of them a sort of 
three-cornered punch. That was the blade, she 
says. Stuck full length in the throat. They’re 
all upside down there. It seems she had pres¬ 
ence of mind enough to send for me but not 
enough to send for the police.” 

“Oh, the poor, poor boy! I—I never liked 
him.” 

“Maybe he killed himself on that account,” 
grumbled her husband, lacing his second shoe 
and rising puffingly from the task. “He—” 

“Oh, it was suicide then? The—” 

“Nobody seems to know what it was,” he re¬ 
joined. “I suppose later on I’ll have to sit on 
that question, too, in my capacity of coroner. 
Good-by. Don’t wait breakfast for me.” 

He was gone. Presently through the open 
window his wife could hear the throaty wheeze 
of his car’s engine as the self-starter awakened 
it. Then there was a whirr and a rattle through 
the stillness, and the car was on its fast flight to 
Vailholme. 

Dr. Lawton found the house glaringly lighted 
from end to end. The front door stood wide. 
So did the baize door which led back to the 



Beyond the Smashed Door 165 

kitchen quarters. Through the latter issued the 
gabble and strident terror of mixed voices. 

As the doctor came into the lower hall, Thax- 
ton Vail emerged from the living room to meet 
him. Vail’s face was ghastly. Behind him was 
Miss Gregg. 

The others of the party were grouped in un¬ 
natural postures in the living room, their chairs 
huddled close together as though their occupants 
felt subconscious yearning for mutual protection. 
Joshua Q. Mosely—mountainous in a yellow 
dustcoat that swathed his purple silk pajamas— 
was holding tight to the hand of his sniveling lit¬ 
tle wife. Doris was crouched low in a corner 
chair. Beside her sat Clive Creede trying awk¬ 
wardly to calm the convulsive tremors which 
now and then shook her. 

“Take me up there/’ Dr. Lawton bade Vail. 
“You can tell me about it while I’m—” 

He left the sentence unfinished and followed 
Thaxton up the stairs. 

“We had a robbery at dinner time,” explained 
Vail as they went. “I was afraid the thieves 
might make a try, later, for more things than 
they could grab up at first. Foolish idea, I sup¬ 
pose. But anyhow I decided to spend the night 
downstairs. I let poor Chase have my room. 


166 


The Amateur Inn 


Macduff, here, set up a most ungodly racket a 
few minutes ago. We followed him to my room 
and broke in. Chase was lying there in bed. 
You remember that big knife of mine—the one 
Clive Creede gave me? He had been stabbed 
with that. He— Here’s the room.” 

As he stood aside for the doctor to pass in, 
another car rattled up to the porte-cochere. 

“Wait a second,” said Thaxton. “That may 
be Quimby. Miss Gregg said she phoned him 
just after she notified you. He—” 

The chief of police bustled into the hallway, 
and, at Vail’s summons, he came lumbering im¬ 
portantly upstairs. Together he and Dr. Law- 
ton entered the deathly still room, Thaxton fol¬ 
lowing. 

“We left him as—as he was,” explained Vail. 
“Clive says the law demands that.” 

Neither of the others paid any heed to him. 
Both were leaning over the bed. Thaxton stood 
awkwardly behind them, feeling an alien in his 
own room. Presently Dr. Lawton spoke almost 
indignantly. 

“X wondered why he should be lying as if he 
were asleep; with a wound like that,” said he. 
“Except for the look on his face there’s no sign 
of disturbance. I see now.” 



Beyond the Smashed Door 167 

As he spoke he picked from the floor beside 
the bed a heavy metal water carafe which be¬ 
longed on the bedside stand. Its surface was 
dented far more deeply than so short a tumble 
warranted. 

“Stabbed him,” said the doctor. “Then, as he 
cried out, stunned him. See, Chief?” 

The chief nodded. Then he turned from the 
bed and swept the room with his beetle-browed 
gaze. His eyes focused on the nearest window. 
It stood open, as did all the room’s other win¬ 
dows, on that breathless night. 

But its short muslin curtain was thrust aside 
so far as to be torn slightly from its rod. On 
the white sill was the distinct mark of a scrape 
in the paint and a blob of dried mud as from the 
instep of a boot. 

“Got in and out through the window,” de¬ 
creed Quimby. “In a hurry going out.” 

“The door was locked,” put in Vail. “Locked 
from the inside.” 

“H’m!” mused the chief, crossing to the splin¬ 
tered portal. “I see. You folks broke it in, eh? 
Where’s the key?” 

“What key?” 

“Key of the door, of course. If Mr. Chase 
locked himself in he must have done it with a 


168 


The Amateur Inn 


key. And it isn’t likely he took the key out of 
the lock afterward. Where is it? It isn’t in the 
keyhole.” 

“The door flew open pretty hard/’ said Vail. 
“Perhaps the key was knocked out onto the 
floor. Shall I look?” 

“Never mind/’ refused the chief. “It isn’t 
immediate. My men can look for it in the morn¬ 
ing. I’m going to seal this room, of course, and 
keep someone on guard. That knife, now— 
that ought to be easy to trace. It isn’t like any 
other I ever saw. It—” 

“You’re right,” acceded Vail, nettled at his 
lofty air, “it’s quite easy to trace. It’s mine.” 

“Yours?” 

The chiel fairly spat the word at him. 
Again the heavy gray brows bent, the eyes 
mere slits of quizzical light between the puck¬ 
ered lids. 

“Yes,” said Vail. “I had it out, earlier in the 
evening. I used it to draw a cork. I didn’t put 
it back in my pocket. I must have left it lying 
somewhere. I looked afterward but I couldn’t 
find it. Some one must have—” 

“You left the knife in this room?” 

“No,” denied Vail, after a moment’s thought. 
“I couldn’t have done that. I didn’t come up 



Beyond the Smashed Door 169 

here again. No, if I left it anywhere it was 
downstairs.” 

“H’m!” grunted the chief, non-committally. 

Irritated afresh by the official’s manner, Thax- 
ton turned to the doctor, who was once more 
leaving the bedside. 

“Dr. Lawton,” he asked, “is there any chance 
he killed himself?” 

“Not the slightest,” replied Lawton with 
much emphasis. “He was lying on his left side. 
The point entered the carotid from behind. He 
could not possibly have struck the blow. And 
in any event he could not have stunned himself 
with that metal water bottle afterward. No, 
there is every proof it was not suicide. The 
man was murdered.” 

“And the murderer escaped through the win¬ 
dow,” supplemented the chief. “Also, he en¬ 
tered by the same route. Now, we’ll leave 
everything as it is, and I’ll take my flashlight 
and examine the ground just below here.” 

But before he left the room he leaned far out 
of the window looking downward. Vail had no 
need to follow the chief’s example. He knew 
the veranda roof was directly outside and that 
any active man could climb up or down the vine 
trellis which screened that end of the porch. 


170 


The Amateur Inn 

He also knew no man could have done so 
without making enough noise to have attracted 
Thaxton’s notice in the night’s stillness before 
the crime. Nor could any man have walked on 
the tin veranda-roof, even barefoot, without the 
crackle and bulge of the tin giving loud notice 
of his presence. A tin roof cannot be traversed 
noiselessly, even by a cat, to say nothing of a 
grown man. 

As the three trooped downstairs they found 
the others assembled in the hall nervously await¬ 
ing them. 

“Well?” asked Miss Gregg. 

“He was murdered!” pronounced the chief, 
portentously. 

“You amaze me,” said the old lady. “But 
then, of course, you have the trained police men¬ 
tality. By whom?” 

“That is what we intend to find out,” an¬ 
swered the chief, tartly. “Where’s the phone? 
I want to send for a couple of my men. When 
I’ve done that I want to ask a few questions.” 

“We may as well go back into the living room 
and sit down,” suggested Doris. “It’s chilly 
out here.” 

But as the rest were following her suggestion 
she took occasion to slip back into the hall 


Beyond the Smashed Door 171 

whither Vail was returning after showing 
Quimby where to find the telephone. 

“Thax!” she whispered hurriedly. “I’m so 
sorry I was cross! I spoke abominably to you. 
Won’t you please forgive me? You know per¬ 
fectly well I didn’t mean a word of the nasty 
things I said.” 

“I know,” he said soothingly. “I know. 
Don’t think any more about it. It’s all right. 
I—” 

“And, Thax,” she went on, thrilling oddly as 
his hand clasped hers, “I did what you asked me 
to, after all. I took the pistol upstairs with me. 
I hid it under the scarf I was carrying, and I 
smuggled it up there. I wanted you to know—” 
“They’ll be here in ten minutes now,” inter¬ 
rupted the chief, returning from the telephone. 

He preceded them into the living room. 
Briefly, at his request, Vail told of the collie’s 
amazing behavior and of the finding of Chase. 

“You say you hadn’t gone to bed?” asked 
Quimby, when the short recital was ended. 
“Why not?” 

“It is my own house. It had been robbed. I 
felt responsible. It seemed safer for some one 
to stay on guard.” 

“In case the thief or thieves should return?” 


172 


The Amateur Inn 


inquired the chief. “If you had any practical 
experience in such matters, you would know a 
house which has just been robbed is safer than 
any other. Thieves don’t rob the same house a 
second time the same night. Police annals show 
that a house in which a crime has just been com¬ 
mitted is immune from an immediate second 
crime.” 

“If robbery and murder may both be classi¬ 
fied as crimes and not as mere outbursts of play¬ 
fulness,” said Miss Gregg, “that theory has been 
proven with beautiful definiteness here to-night. 
So the second crime was probably imaginary or 
only—” 

“I was talking of thefts,” said Quimby, glow¬ 
ering sulkily at her. 

Then stirred to professional sternness by the 
hint of ridicule, he turned majestically once 
more to Vail. 

“You were sitting up?” he prompted. “You 
were guarding your house—or trying to—from 
a second series of thefts? Is that it?” 

Thaxton nodded. 

“You are sure you didn’t go to sleep all 
night?” 

“I am.” 

“Be careful, Mr. Vail! Many a man is will- 


Beyond the Smashed Door 173 

ing to swear he hasn’t slept a wink when really 
he dozed off without knowing it. That is a 
common error.” 

“Common or not, I don’t think it is likely I 
was asleep when Chase was killed. Because I 
was on my feet and walking.” 

“Soi?” 

The chief was interested, formidably inter¬ 
ested. 

“You know then just when Mr. Chase was 
killed?” 

“I know when the dog set up that racket. 
Presumably that was the time. I know because 
I had looked at my watch as I left the house, 
just before. It was five minutes past three 
when I looked.” 

Dr. Lawton glanced at his own watch. 

“It is seven minutes of four,” said he. “My 
examination proved Mr. Chase cannot have 
been dead quite an hour. The two times agree.” 

“You say you left the house,” pursued the 
chief, deaf to this interpolation and bending for¬ 
ward, his eyes gripping Vail. “Why did you 
leave the house?” 

“To make a tour of it,” returned Thaxton. 
“It was the second time since the others went 
to bed that I had gone out to make the rounds 


174 The Amateur Inn 

of the veranda path. The time between, I was 
sitting in my study except for one trip through 
the interior of the house at about one o’clock. 
That time I went from cellar to attic.” 

“But you had left the house shortly before 
the approximate time of Mr. Chase’s death?” 
insisted the chief. “You went out through the 
front door?” 

“Yes. I—” 

“And came back again through the front 
door?” 

“Of course.” 

“Shortly after the murder?” 

“The moment I heard Macduff howl. And I 
hadn’t been outside for more than—” 

“We’ll come back to that if necessary. At 
present we have established the fact that you 
left the house shortly before the killing and that 
you came in again shortly afterward.” 

Again Vail nodded, this time a trifle sullenly. 
Like Miss Gregg, he found the chief’s hectoring 
manner annoyed him. Nor did he care to admit 
that at the instant of Macduff’s howling he had 
been standing motionless under the window of 
Doris Lane’s room in all but reverent—if absurd 
—sense of watching over her safety while she 
slumbered. 


Chapter XII 

WHEREIN CLIVE PLAYS THE FOOL 


M R. VAIL/’ spoke up the chief, a new 
smoothness and consideration in his 
manner, “it is my duty to mention for the sec¬ 
ond time this evening that anything you may 
say is liable to be used against you. I merely 
speak of it. Now that I’ve done so, if you care 
to go on answering my questions—” 

“Fire away!” said Vail. 

“The slayer of Willis Chase,” said the chief 
portentously “was outside the house. He 
climbed in by an open window. His deed ac¬ 
complished, he climbed hastily out again. In 
other words he, too, was outside the house 
shortly before and shortly after the crime.” 
“What do you mean?” 

“You say you made the rounds outside the 
house. You declare you were awake and on 
guard. Did you not see or hear any one climb¬ 
ing to the veranda roof or walking on it or get¬ 
ting into that open window? From your own 

statement you could not have been far from that 

175 



176 The Amateur Inn 

window, at least once, in circling or starting to 
circle the house. You could not have avoided 
seeing or hearing any trespasser on the trellis 
or on the roof just above you. It is established 
that you were out there at the time the murder 
must have been committed.” 

“I did not see any one or hear any one out 
there,” said Vail. 

“Yet you admit you were there?” 

“Yes. And nobody else was. I’d have heard 
him on the roof. And I’d have heard the vines 
rustle.” 

“I agree with you. You would. Mr. Vail, I 
have had much respect for you. I had still more 
for your great-uncle, Mr. Osmun Vail. But I 
am afraid it will be my painful duty to place 
you under arrest. Unless we—” 

“Reuben Quimby, you old fool!” shrilled Miss 
Gregg. “Why, this boy is—” 

“Now, now!” boomed Joshua Q. Mosely, 
“Don’t you go calling bad names, ma’am, pre- 
matoorely. I get the chief’s drift. He’s dead 
right. The evidence is clear. Don’t you see? 
Vail here admits he went outside a little be¬ 
fore the murder and that he came in again a 
little after it. He says he wasn’t farther off 
than the walk that borders the porch. He ad- 



Wherein Clive Plays the Fool 177 

mits he didn’t see or hear any one else. That 
can’t mean but just one thing. It means he 
shinned up those vines and into the window and 
—and did what he went there to do—and came 
back in time to run upstairs when the dog waked 
us. And I heard you tell the doctor on the 
phone that it was Vail’s own knife the murder 
was done with. There’s nothing else to it. 
He—” 

“It’s you who are the old fool, Mosely, not 
only the chief!” exclaimed Clive Creede, wrath- 
fully, as the rest sat open-mouthed with dismay 
at the linking of the chain of seemingly stupid 
questions. “If you knew Mr. Vail as we know 
him—as the chief ought to know him—you’d 
know he couldn’t do such a thing. He couldn’t! 
Why, what motive could he have? Absolutely 
none. It needs a terrific motive to make a man 
commit murder. Juries take that into account.” 

“But—” 

“Thax had no such motive. I could swear 
to that. If his butler or any other servant 
should have overheard and testify to the petty 
quarrel between him and Chase that I walked in 
on early in the morning, when I came here, any 
jury would laugh at such a squabble leading to 
a crime. I speak of it because the butler was 


178 


The Amateur Inn 


in the outer hall at the time and may give a 
wrong impression of the spat; and some shyster 
lawyer may try to magnify it. It was nothing. 
Chase wanted to come to board and Vail, for 
some reason, didn’t want him to. At least that 
is all of the quarrel I heard. But men don’t 
kill each other for puerile causes like that. Any 
more than for the silly dispute I overheard them 
having a few days ago at the Hunt Club in 
Stockbridge when Vail threatened he’d—” 

“You idiot!” growled Thaxton. “What are 
you trying to get at? You’ve known Chase and 
me all our lives. You know we were good 
chums. And you know we were forever bicker¬ 
ing, in fun, and having mock disputes and in¬ 
sulting each other; from the time we were kids. 
So—” 

“That’s just what I’m saying,” urged Clive 
eagerly. “That’s what I’m trying to hammer 
into the chief’s head. You had no real motive, 
no matter what servants or other people may 
be. dragged forward to testify about hearing 
spats and squabbles between you. You were his 
friend. Why, Chief, you’re out of your mind 
when you threaten to arrest him!” 

“From all I’m hearing,” said the chief grimly, 
“I figure I’m less and less out of my mind. Mr. 


Wherein Clive Plays the Fool 179 

Vail, do you care to tell the nature of the quar¬ 
rel between you and the deceased—the one Mr. 
Creede says he ‘walked in on’?” 

“I’ve told you,” interposed Creede vehe¬ 
mently, “and so has he, that it was just a sort 
of joke. It has no bearing on the case. As 
Vail says, he and Chase were always at swords’ 
points—in a friendly way. Besides,” he went 
on, triumphantly, “I can attest to the truth of at 
least one important part of what he’s just told 
you. I can swear to it. He said a few minutes 
ago that he made a round of the house from 
top to bottom, about one o’clock. He did. I 
heard him. I couldn’t get to sleep till nearly two. 
I heard the stable clock strike one. Then al¬ 
most right afterward I heard soft steps come 
upstairs and tiptoe along the hall. I heard them 
pause at the room next to mine, and I heard a 
rattle as if the door was being tried. Then the 
steps passed on to—” 

“Sounded as if he tiptoed to the room next to 
yours and tried the door?” interrupted the 
chief. “Who was occupying the room next to 
you?” 

Clive’s lips parted for a reply. Then, as his 
eyes suddenly dilated his mouth clamped. 

“Who was occupying that room?” repeated 


180 


The Amateur Inn 


Quimby in augmented interest. “The room he 
stopped at and whose door he tried.” 

“I—I don’t know,” stammered Clive. “And 
it’s of no importance anyhow. I mentioned it 
to prove Vail could be corroborated in part of 
his account of how he spent the night, and that 
if part of his story was true it all was true. 
He—” 

“I don’t agree with you that it’s ‘of no im¬ 
portance,’ whose locked door he tried to open,” 
snapped the chief. “It is highly important in 
every way. If—” 

“Then I can clear up the mystery,” said Vail 
wearily. “My own bedroom is next to Creede’s. 
That is the room in which Chase was sleeping.” 

“Ah! Then—” 

“Only,” pursued Vail, “my loyal friend here 
is mistaken in saying I tried the door. I didn’t 
try that or any other door.” 

“I never said you did, Thax!” protested 
Clive eagerly. “I said I heard a rattle, as if a 
door was being tried. It may have been a door 
somewhere rattling in the wind, or it may have 
been—” 

“On a windless night?” cut in the chief. “Or 
did the killer of Willis Chase try first to get into 
his room by way of the door and then, finding 


Wherein Clive Plays the Fool 181 

that locked, enter the room later by the open 
window? In that case—” 

“Shame!” 

“It was Doris Lane who broke in furiously 
upon the chief’s deductions. 

“Oh, it is shameful!” she hurried on, her eyes 
ablaze, her slender body tense. “You are trying 
to weave a filthy net around him! And this 
poor sick blundering friend of his is inadver¬ 
tently helping you! Thaxton Vail could no 
more have done a thing like that than—than—” 
Choking, she glanced at her aunt for reen¬ 
forcement. To her astonishment old Miss Gregg 
had lost her momentary excitement and was sit¬ 
ting unruffled, hands in lap, a peaceful half-smile 
on her shrewd face. Apparently she was deriv¬ 
ing much pleasing interest from the scene. 

“But, Chief!” stammered the luckless Clive, 
looking miserably at Vail. “I can’t even be sure 
it was Thax whose steps I heard up there. It 
may have been any one else’s. I only spoke of 
it to corroborate him. Oh, why didn’t Chase 
stay in the magenta room? There’s no way of 
climbing into that from the ground. If only 
Thax hadn’t made him change rooms—” 

“Will you be quiet?” stormed Doris, aflame 
with indignation. “Isn’t he suffering enough 


182 


The Amateur Inn 


from these senseless questions; without your 
making it worse?” 

“Hush, Doris, dear!” soothed Miss Gregg. 
“Don’t interfere. I’m sure Reuben Quimby is 
doing very well indeed—for Reuben Quimby. 
His questions aren’t stupid either. A few of 
them have been almost intelligent.” 

“Thanks, dear little girl,” whispered Vail, 
leaving his seat of inquisition and bending 
above the tremblingly angry Doris. “It’s fine 
of you. But you mustn’t let yourself get 
wrought up or unhappy on my account. I—” 

“There’s something else, Chief,” boomed 
Joshua Q. Mosely, “something that maybe’ll 
have a bearing on this, in the way of character 
testimony. I can swear to the prisoner’s homi¬ 
cidal temper. See this swelling on my chin? 
He knocked me down early in the evening. 
Mrs. M. and all these others can testify to that. 
The prisoner—” 

“There is no ‘prisoner,’ Mr. Mosely,” gravely 
corrected the chief. “No arrest has actually 
been made—yet. But in view of the circum¬ 
stantial testimony, Mr. Vail,” he proceeded, 
rising and advancing on the unflinching Thax- 
ton, “in view of the testimony, I fear it is my 
very painful duty to—” 



Wherein Clive Plays the Fool 183 

“To stop making a noise like Rhadamanthus,” 
interpolated Miss Gregg, “and sit down and 
listen for a minute to the first gleam of sane 
common sense that has filtered into this mess. 
Thax, is the old Elzevir Bible still on its lectern 
in the study ?” 

“Why — yes,” answered Vail, puzzled. 
“But—” 

“You remember it, don’t you, Doctor?” she 
asked, as she wheeled suddenly on the gaping 
physician. 

“The Elzevir Bible?” repeated Dr. Lawton, 
coming garrulously out of the daze into which 
an unduly swift and unforeseen sequence of 
events is won’t to plunge the old. “Why 
shouldn’t I remember it? It was Osmun Vail’s 
dearest possession. He paid a fortune for it. I 
remember how you used to scold him for putting 
it on a lectern in his study instead of locking it 
up. And I remember the day you insisted on 
protecting it with that ugly gray cloth cover 
because you said the damp was getting into the 
precious old leather. If Oz Vail had cared less 
for you or been less afraid of you he’d never 
have allowed such a sacrilege. But what’s that 
got to do with—” 

She had not waited to hear him out, but had 


184 The Amateur Inn 

left the room. The chief fidgeted annoyedly. 
The others looked blank. As Quimby cleared 
his throat noisily, as if to speak, the little old 
lady returned. Reverently between her veined 
hands she bore a large volume neatly covered 
with a sleazy dark gray muslin binding. 

“Do you recognize it, Doctor?” she asked. 

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Lawton, impa¬ 
tiently. “But at a time like this, surely—” 

He paused. For she was paying no attention 
to his protest. Advancing to the table, Miss 
Gregg laid the Book reverently upon it. Then 
she placed both hands on its cover. 

“Chief,” she said with a queer solemnity in 
her imperious voice, “I have something to say. 
On the chance you may not otherwise believe 
me, I am attesting to my statement’s truth on 
this Book of Books. Will you hear me?” 

“Why—why, of course, Miss Gregg!” ex¬ 
claimed the chief. “But you are not called upon 
to take oath. This is not a courtroom, nor am 
I a magistrate. Besides, your unsupported 
word—” 

“I prefer to make my statement with my 
hands upon this Book,” she insisted, “in order 
that there can be no question, now or later, as 
to my veracity. I hoped I might be able to 


Wherein Clive Plays the Fool 185 

avoid making the statement at all. It is not a 
pleasant confession to make, and it may hold me 
up to ridicule or to possible misconception. 
But I have no right to consider my own wishes 
when a net of silly circumstantial evidence is 
closing around an innocent man. You will hear 
me out?” 

“Certainly, ma’am. But perhaps later it 
might—” 

“Not later,” she refused, with a brief return 
to the imperiousness which was her birthright. 
“Here is my story: Last evening after I went to 
bed I got to thinking over the robberies. And 
no matter what courses of reasoning I might 
follow I couldn’t make it seem that any one but 
Thaxton Vail had committed them. So I—” 

“Auntie!” cried Doris, in keen distress. 

Vail’s face flushed. He looked with pitiful 
dismay at his old friend. But Miss Gregg went 
on without glancing at either of the two young 
people: 

“I deduced that he might be sitting up ex¬ 
amining his plunder or might even be planning 
to steal more while the rest of us were asleep. 
By the time the stable clock struck one I 
couldn’t lie there inactive any longer. I got up 
and put on this dressing gown and slippers. 


186 The Amateur Inn 

That is how I chanced to have them on when 
the alarm was given. Doris was sound asleep. 

. I crept out of our suite without waking her. 
She was asleep; as I said. I could hear her. 
That is one of the joys of being young. Young 
folks’ consciences are so tough from many sins 
that they sleep like babes.” 

She caught herself up in this philosophical 
digression. Then, clasping the Book a little 
tighter, she continued: 

“I tiptoed out into the passageway. There 
was a faint light in the lower hall. I looked 
down. Macduff was lying at the foot of the 
stairs. I think he heard me, for he lifted his 
head from between his paws and wagged his tail. 
Then I peered over the banisters. And I saw 
Thax sitting at his study table. He was dressed 
—as he is now. The coast was clear for a peep 
into his room in case he had left any of the 
stolen things lying around there. So I tiptoed 
to his door and tried it. It was locked. Of 
course,” she added primly, “I didn’t dream Wil¬ 
lis Chase was in there. Yes, I tiptoed to his 
room and tried the knob. That was the rattling 
sound Clive Creede heard just after the stable 
clock struck.” 


Wherein Clive Plays the Fool 187 

She glanced sharply at Creede. Clive 
nodded in wordless gratitude. 

“As I was starting back toward my suite,” she 
went on, “I heard Thax begin to climb the stairs. 
I crouched back behind the highboy in the upper 
hall. I didn’t care to be seen at that time of 
night rambling around my host’s house in such 
costume—or lack of costume. (It was not coy¬ 
ness, understand. It was fear of ridicule. Coy¬ 
ness, in a woman of my age, is like a scarecrow 
left in a field after the crop is gathered.)” 

“Auntie!” protested Doris again, but Miss 
Gregg went on unchecked: 

“Well, there I hid while he went past me, near 
enough for me to have stuck a pin in him. And, 
by the way, he did not try the knob of the room 
where Willis Chase was. He didn’t try any 
doors at all. He just groped along till he came 
to the third story stairs. Then he went up 
them.” 

There was a slight general rustle at this an¬ 
nouncement. Miss Gregg resumed: 

“I wondered what he had been doing in his 
study alone at one o’clock. I wondered if he 
was looking over the loot there. I couldn’t re¬ 
sist the temptation to find out. (You know, 



188 The Amateur Inn 

Chief, I believe that Providence sends us our 
temptations in order that we may yield to them 
gracefully. If we resist them, the time will come 
when Providence will rebuke our stubbornness 
by sending us no more temptations. And a temp¬ 
tationless old age is a hideous thing to look for¬ 
ward to. But that is beside the point. Excuse 
me for moralizing. The idea just occurred to 
me, and it seemed too good to keep to myself.) 
Let me see—where was I?” 

“You said you were tempted to go down to the 
study while Mr. Vail was in the third story,” 
prompted Quimby. “To see if you could 
find—” 

“Oh, yes,” she recalled herself. “Quite so. 
I was tempted. That means I yielded. I scut¬ 
tled down there as fast and as quietly as I could. 
I almost fell over the dratted dog at the bottom 
of the stairs. I got to the study at last. But I 
barely had time to inspect the desk top and one 
or two drawers—no sign of the plunder in any 
of them—when I heard Thax Vail coming down¬ 
stairs. There was no chance to run back to my 
room. So I—I— In short, I so far lost the stately 
dignity which I like to believe has always been 
mine, as to—in fact, to dodge down behind the 
desk—in the narrow space between it and the 



Wherein Clive Plays the Fool 189 

wall. By the way, Thax, you must—you simply 
must —tell Horoson to see the maids sweep more 
carefully in that cranny. I was deathly afraid 
the dust would make me sneeze. It was shame¬ 
fully thick.” 

“Well, ma’am?” again prompted Quimby. 

“Excuse me, Chief. I am a housewife myself. 
(That’s the only kind of wife I or any one else 
ever cared for me to be, by the way.) Well, 
there I hid. Thax came into the study. And 
as he wouldn’t go out of it I had to sit there on 
the floor. I suppose it was only for a couple of 
hours at most, though I could have sworn it was 
at least nine Arctic winters. All of me went to 
sleep except my brain. My legs were dead ex¬ 
cept when they took turns at pringling. So was 
my back till I got a crick in it. And the dust—” 

“While you were there,” asked the chief, “did 
Mr. Vail leave the room?” 

“If he had,” she retorted, in fierce contempt, 
“do you suppose I’d have kept on sitting there 
in anguish, man? No, the inconsiderate ruf¬ 
fian stayed. He didn’t even have the decency 
to go to sleep so I could escape. I heard the 
stable clock strike two, and then, several months 
later, I hear it strike three. (Oh, I forgot! My 
hands are on the Book. It struck three an hour 


190 The Amateur Inn 

later. Not several months later.) Then, just 
after it struck three that wretched man got up 
and stretched and went out.” 

“Yes?” 

“He walked to the front door and opened it. 
By that time I was on my feet. Both of them 
were asleep—both my feet, I mean—and I had 
to stamp them awake. It took me perhaps five 
seconds, and it hurt like the very mischief. Then 
I was for creeping up to bed. But as I saw the 
open front door I was tempted again. I thought 
perhaps he had had some signal from an ac¬ 
complice outside—a signal I hadn’t heard. I 
went toward the door. And at that instant the 
collie here set up the most awful yowling. I 
bolted past him up the stairs. As I got to 
the top I looked back. Macduff was still yowl¬ 
ing. And Thax Vail came running into the 
house to see what ailed the cur.” 

“Then—” 

“What I am getting at is that Thax was not 
out of my sight for more than thirty seconds in 
all—thirty seconds at the very most,” she con¬ 
cluded. “And I leave it to your own common 
sense if he could have climbed to the window 
of his room in that time, found and killed Willis 
Chase in the dark (he carried no flashlight—I 


Wherein Clive Plays the Fool 191 

saw that through the kneehole of the desk as he 
went out), climbed down again and gotten into 
the house—all inside of thirty seconds. He 
couldn’t. And you know he couldn’t.” 


Chapter XIII 
HOW ONE OATH WAS TAKEN 


S HE glared defiance at the chief, then, in 
placid triumph, let her eyes roam the circle 
of faces. The Moselys were wide-eyed with in¬ 
terest. Doris avoided her aunt’s searching gaze. 
Her own eyes were downcast, her face was 
working. Clive Creede gave a great sigh as of 
relief. Vail came forward, lifted one of the little 
old lady’s hands from the Book and kissed it. 
He said nothing. It was the chief who broke 
the brief silence which followed the testimony. 

“You—you are certain, Miss Gregg, that the 
time Mr. Vail was out of your sight was not 
longer than thirty seconds?” he asked, troubled. 

“I didn’t have a stop watch,” she retorted 
tartly. “But the time was just long enough for 
me to stand up, stamp the pringles out of my 
joints, go to the front hall, and then to run to 
the top of one short flight of stairs. In that 
time if he had committed the murder he must 
have traversed the whole distance around the 
veranda walk to a spot below his own room, 

climbed the vines (making sure not to let them 

192 


How One Oath Was Taken 193 

rustle loudly), crawl across the roof to the win¬ 
dow, wriggle in, locate the bed and the man on 
it, kill him, and repeat the whole process of get¬ 
ting through the window to the roof and from 
the roof to the ground and from the ground to 
the front door. If he could do that in thirty sec¬ 
onds or less he deserves immunity for his speed 
record.” 

“He could not have done it in less than several 
minutes,” said the chief, consideringly. “And 
if you were out in the front hall for part of that 
time you couldn’t have failed to hear the rustle 
of the vines or the steps on the roof. That 
would cut the time down to even less than the 
thirty seconds you speak of. No, he could not 
have done it.” 

“That’s what I told you all along!” chimed 
in Clive Creede. “And I told you he couldn’t 
possibly have had any motive. He—” 

“Clive!” said Miss Gregg, her voice acid. 
“Did you ever hear a wise old maxim that runs: 
‘Save me from my friends and I’ll save myself 
from my enemies’? Stop wringing your hands 
in that silly nervous way and clap both of them 
tight over your mouth and keep them there. A 
little more of your staunch friendship and Thax 
would be on his way to jail. Please—” 




194 The Amateur Inn 

“You did not lose sight of Mr. Vail/’ summed 
up the chief with visible reluctance, “from about 
one o’clock until less than thirty seconds before 
the alarm was given? You could swear to that 
if necessary, Miss Gregg?” 

“Do you suppose I’ve been keeping my palms 
on this scratchy old muslin just for fun?” she 
snapped. 

“Oh, yes, I remember!” Quimby corrected 
himself in some confusion. “I forgot you have 
already sworn—that you made your statement 
with your hands resting on the Holy Bible. In 
that event, Mr. Vail, I can only apologize for 
my hint at arresting you. I see no evidence at 
present to hold you or any one else on. Miss 
Gregg’s word—to say nothing of her solemn 
oath—would convince any jury in this county 
and would clear you. Doctor, you will be ready 
to testify at the inquest that Mr. Chase had 
been dead less than one hour when you examined 
him?” 

“I shall,” replied Lawton, unhesitatingly. 

“One question more, Mr. Vail, if you will per¬ 
mit,” said the chief, with marked increase of 
deference, as he turned again to Thaxton. “Or, 
rather, two questions. In the first place, what 


How One Oath Was Taken 195 

was the cause and the nature of your quarrel 
with Mr. Chase—the quarrel which Mr. Creede 
says he interrupted this morning?” 

“Mr. Creede has told you all there is to tell 
about that,” answered Thaxton, with some cold¬ 
ness of tone and manner. “Mr. Chase had read 
in the paper that I was obliged to maintain Vail- 
holme as a hotel. He insisted on coming here. 
Not as a guest but to board. He thought it was 
a great joke. I did not. That is where we dif¬ 
fered. There was no quarrel as he and I under¬ 
stood it. Nothing but an exchange of friendly 
abuse. It remained for Mr. Creede to construe 
it into a quarrel.” 

“I see,” said the chief, doubtfully. “The sec¬ 
ond and last question is: Why did you, late in 
the evening, insist on transferring Mr. Chase 
from the room assigned to him to your own 
room?” 

“Because the night was hot, and his room was 
uncomfortable and mine was cool and comforta¬ 
ble, and I was not going to occupy my own room 
all night.” 

“H’m!” murmured Quimby. 

The tramp of feet in the front hall put an end 
to any further queries he might have been 



196 The Amateur Inn 

framing. Whitcomb and two other constables 
stood in the living room doorway, arriving in 
answer to the telephone summons. 

At once the chief ranged from inquisitor to 
policeman. 

“First of all,” he directed his men, “bring 
your flashlights, and we’ll examine the ground 
under that window. Then we’ll climb up, the 
same way, if we can borrow a ladder. The vines 
may—” 

“Flashlight?” repeated Whitcomb. “Why, 
Chief, it’s broad daylight! In another ten min¬ 
utes the sun’ll be up.” 

He went over to the nearest long window and 
threw open the old-fashioned wooden shutters. 
Into the room surged the strong dawnlight, 
paling the electric lamps to a sickly yellow. 

In, too, through the window itself as he swung 
it wide, wafted a breath of sweet summer morn¬ 
ing air, heavy of dew-soaked earth and of 
flowers and vibrant with the matin song of a 
million birds. 

The lightning transition from spectral night 
to flush daylight came as a shock to the group. 
It jolted them back to normality. Joshua Q. 
Mosely was the first to speak. 

“Guess we’ll hunt up Pee-air and have him 


How One Oath Was Taken 197 

bring the car around,” said he briskly. “I and 
Mrs. M. did our packing last night. No sense 
in our sticking here any longer. I’ll leave my 
address with you, Chief, and a memo about the 
reward. Guess we’ll move along to Lenox or 
maybe down to Lee for breakfast. See you be¬ 
fore we go, Mr. Vail. So long!” 

He followed the chief and his men from the 
room, Mrs. Mosely in tow. Dr. Lawton drifted 
aimlessly after Quimby. 

The four who remained stood for a moment 
looking after the receding outlanders. Then 
Clive turned impulsively, remorsefully, to Vail. 

“I’m so sorry old man!” he exclaimed. “So 
rotten sorry! I never meant—” 

“Sorry?” echoed Miss Gregg. “You needn’t 
be. You did your best. It’s no fault of yours 
that Thax isn’t to be held for the Grand Jury.” 

Creede winced as though she had spat in his 
face. He was ghastly pale, and he slumped 
rather than stood. He looked desperately ill. 

“I was trying to help,” he pleaded, his ghastly 
face working. “Honestly, I was, Thax. I sup¬ 
pose that gas attack at my lab has dulled what¬ 
ever brains I had. It seemed to me I was back¬ 
ing you up, and then all at once I realized I had 
said things that might make him think—” 


The Amateur Inn 


198 

“They made him think, all right/’ assented 
the grim old lady. “And you backed Thax up, 
too—backed him clear up against the wall. If 
I hadn’t had the rare good luck to be able to 
prove he was innocent—” 

“Oh, it’s all right, Clive,” said Vail, pitying 
his friend’s utter demoralization. “You meant 
all right. I—” 

“It’s all wrong,” denied Creede brokenly. 
“I’ve harmed the best friend I have in the world. 
The fact that I was trying to help doesn’t make 
any difference. If you don’t mind, I’ll follow 
the sweet Moselys’ example—pack up and go 
home.” 

“Nonsense!” scoffed Vail. “No harm’s done. 
Stay on here. You meant all right—” 

“Hell is paved with the skulls of people who 
‘meant all right,’ ” interpolated Miss Gregg, 
severely. “The vilest insult one rational human 
can heap upon another is that damning phrase, 
‘He meant all right! ’ It’s a polite term for ‘mis¬ 
chief maker’ and for ‘hoodoo.’ ” 

Clive turned his hollowly sick eyes on her in 
hopeless resignation. But the sight did not 
soften her peppery mood. 

“Clive,” she rebuked, “I’ve known you al¬ 
ways. I knew your father. I know your 



How One Oath Was Taken 199 

brother—though I don’t mention that when I 
can help it. All of you have had plenty of 
faults. But not one of you was ever a fool. 
You, least of all. The war must have done 
queer things to your head as well as to your 
lungs and heart. No normal man, with all the 
brains you took with you to France, could have 
come back with so few. It isn’t in human na¬ 
ture. There’s a catch in this, somewhere.” 

Creede bowed his head in weary acceptance 
of her tirade. Then he looked with furtive ap¬ 
peal at Doris. But the girl was again sitting 
with tight-clenched hands, her eyes downcast, 
her soft lips twitching. From her averted face 
he looked to Vail. 

“I’m sorry, Thax,” he repeated heavily. “And 
I’m going. I’d rather. It’ll be pleasanter all 
around. If I can bother you to phone for a 
taxi I’ll go up and get my things together.” 

“No!” urged Thaxton, touched by his chum’s 
misery. “No, no, old man. Don’t be so silly. 
I tell you it’s all—” 

But Creede had slumped out of the room. 
Vail followed at his heels, still protesting noisily 
against the invalid’s decision. 

Miss Gregg watched them go. Then she 
turned to Doris. There was something defiant, 


200 


The Amateur Inn 


something almost apprehensive, in the old 
lady’s aspect as she faced her niece. 

“Well?” she challenged. 

Doris sprang to her feet, her great dark eyes 
regarding Miss Gregg with fascinated horror. 

“Oh, Auntie!” she breathed, accusingly. 
“Auntie!” 

“Well,” bluffed the old lady with a laudable 
effort at swagger, “what then?” 

“Aunt Hester! ” exclaimed the girl. “It was I 
who couldn’t sleep a wink last night. Not you . 
I heard the stable clock strike every single hour 
from twelve to three. And—” 

“Well,” argued Miss Gregg, “what if you 
did? It’s nothing to boast about, is it? Have 
you any monopoly on hearing stable clocks 
strike? Have—?” 

“I had, last night,” responded the girl, “so 
far as our suite was concerned. I lay there and 
listened to you snoring. You went to sleep be¬ 
fore you had been in bed ten minutes. And you 
never stopped snoring one moment till Macduff 
began to howl so horribly. Then you jumped 
up and—” 

“People always seem to think there’s some¬ 
thing degrading about a snore,” commented 
Miss Gregg. “Personally, I like to have people 


How One Oath Was Taken 201 

snore. (As long as they do it out of earshot 
from me.) There’s something honest and whole¬ 
some about snoring. Just as there is in a hearty 
appetite. I’ve no patience with finicky eaters 
and noiseless sleepers. There’s something so 
disgustingly superior about them! Now when 
I eat or sleep—” 

“Aunt Hester!” Doris dragged her back from 
the safety isles of philosophy to the facts of the 
moment. “You were sound asleep in your own 
bed all night—till the dog waked us. But you 
told the chief you didn’t sleep at all and you 
told him that awful rigmarole about hiding be¬ 
hind lowboys and—” 

“Highboys, dear/’ corrected the old lady. 
“Highboys. Or, to be accurate, one highboy 
and one desk. A highboy and a lowboy are two 
very different articles of furniture, as you ought 
to know by this time. Now, that table out in 
the hall there is a low—” 

“You told him all that story,” Doris drove on 
remorselessly, “when not one single syllable of 
it was true. Auntie!” 

“My dear,” demanded Miss Gregg, evasion 
falling from her as she came at last to bay, 
“would you rather have had me tell one small lie 
or have Thaxton Vail lose one large life? Circum- 


202 


The Amateur Inn 


stantial evidence—his own knife and his absence 
from the house at just the critical time and all 
that—and Clive Creede’s rank idiocy in blab¬ 
bing the very worst things he could have blabbed 
—all that would have sent Thax to prison with¬ 
out bail to wait his trial. And, ten to one, it 
would have convicted him. I was thinking of 
that when my inspiration came. Direct from 
On High, as I shall always believe. And I 
spoke up. Then my own niece tries to blame 
me for saving him! Gratitude is a—” 

“But, Auntie!” protested the confused 
Doris. “Surely you could have told the story 
without taking oath on it. Perjury is a ter¬ 
rible thing. Even to save a life. Oh, how 
could you?” 

“I didn’t commit perjury,” stoutly denied 
Miss Gregg. “I did nothing of the kind. I 
didn’t take any oath at all. Not one.” 

“You laid your hands on the Bible,” insisted 
Doris. “You brought it in from the lectern. 
And you laid both hands on it when you testi¬ 
fied. You said you did it in case your bare 
word should be doubted. You laid your dear 
wicked hands on it and—” 

“On what?” challenged Miss Gregg, sullenly. 
“On the Elzevir Bible,” replied Doris, with 



How One Oath Was Taken 203 

all of youth’s intolerance at such infantile dodg¬ 
ing. 

But to the girl’s surprise the old lady glared 
indignantly at her. 

“I did nothing of the sort!” declared Miss 
Gregg. “Absolutely nothing of the sort. In 
the first place, I took care not to say I was on 
oath and not to swear to anything at all. In 
the second place, the Elzevir Bible is in the bot¬ 
tom drawer of Thax’s desk. I know, because I 
put it there not half an hour ago.” 

She crossed to the table and snatched up the 
muslin-swathed book, this time with no rever¬ 
ence at all. Peeling off the sleazy cover, she dis¬ 
closed the volume itself to the girl’s wondering 
eyes. 

It was a bulky copy of Webster’s Unabridged 
Dictionary. 

“Auntie!” babbled the astounded Doris. 

“I have every respect for Noah Webster,” re¬ 
marked Miss Gregg. “The world owes him a 
great debt. But I refuse to believe his excel¬ 
lent dictionary was inspired from Heaven or 
that I committed perjury when I laid my hands 
on it in endorsement of the story I told.” 

“Auntie! I—” 

“And, by the way,” pursued the old lady, “I 


204 


The Amateur Inn 


shall persuade Ezra Lawton to hold the inquest 
here, and I shall see that this book is placed on 
the table for the witnesses’ oaths to be taken 
on. Personally, I shall tell him I have con¬ 
scientious objections to swearing, and when I 
testify I shall merely ‘affirm’ (that is permissible 
in law, you know) with my saintly hands resting 
on this equally saintly tome.” 

She ceased and glared once more at her mar¬ 
veling niece, this time with an unbearable air of 
virtue. Doris returned the look for a second. 
Then, racked by a spasm of mingled tears and 
laughter, she caught the little old woman tight 
in her strong young arms. 

“Oh!” she gasped between laughing and weep¬ 
ing. “How I pity poor Saint Peter when you 
get to the Pearly Gates! Five minutes after he 
refuses to let you in you’ll make a triumphant 
entrance, carrying along his bunch of keys and 
his halo! But it was glorious in you to save 
Thax that way. You’re wonderful! And—and 
it was all a—a fib about your thinking he had 
stolen those things? Please say it was! Please 
do!” 

“My dear,” Miss Gregg instructed her, “if I 
had said I lay awake through utter faith in the 
boy it wouldn’t have carried half the weight as 


How One Oath Was Taken 205 

if I made them think I started out on my vigil 
with a belief in his guilt. Can’t you see that? 
Of course, he never stole those things. I made 
that quite clear to you last evening, didn’t I?” 

“And—and, Auntie—you—you know he’s 
innocent of—of this other awful charge, don’t 
you? Say you do!” 

“The wrost affront that can be offered is an 
affront to the intelligence,” Miss Gregg informed 
her. “Which means your question is a black in¬ 
sult to me. I didn’t grip his hand as Clive did, 
or shout ‘Shame!’ as you did when he was ac¬ 
cused. None of those ‘Hands-Across-the-Sea’ 
demonstrations were needed to show my faith 
in him. My faith isn’t only in the man himself, 
but in his sanity. Whatever else Thax Vail is 
he’s not a born fool. Not brilliant. But as¬ 
suredly not a fool. He wouldn’t kill young Chase 
or any one else—with a knife that every one 
would recognize at once as Thax’s own—and 
then go away, leaving it in the wound for the 
police to find. No, Thax didn’t kill Chase. But 
some one who hates Thax did.” 

“What—” 

“Why else should he do it with that knife? 
There must have been plenty of more suitable 
weapons at hand—unless he has killed so many 



206 


The Amateur Inn 


people this week that all his own weapons are 
in the wash.” 

“But who—?” 

“He must have picked up the knife here,” in¬ 
sisted Miss Gregg, “after I used it for a cork¬ 
screw—either right afterward or else finding it 
here in the night after we’d all gone to bed. 
These windows with their backnumber clasps 
are ridiculously easy to open from outside. And 
from where Thax sat or lay in the study the 
sound of any one entering this room carefully 
couldn’t have been heard. Whoever came in 
to kill Willis Chase must have planned to do it 
with some other weapon—some weapon he 
brought along to do it with. Then he saw the 
knife, and he knew it would switch suspicion to 
Thax. So he used that.” 

“But the windows here were still fastened 
from inside, just now,” argued Doris. “Besides, 
it’s proved the murderer got in through a 
window upstairs. He couldn’t have come in 
through these windows and gotten the knife and 
then have gone out again and closed and locked 
them from the inside. He couldn’t. And Thax 
was the last person downstairs here last night. 
So nobody from inside the house, either, could 
have gotten down here and stolen the knife and 


How One Oath Was Taken 207 

gone upstairs with it again. The study door is 
right at the foot of the stairs. Thax couldn’t 
have helped seeing and hearing him, even if he’d 
been able to step twice over Macduff without 
disturbing the dog. No, it couldn’t be.” 

“You are quite right,” agreed Miss Gregg. 
“It couldn’t. Lots of things in this mystery- 
drama world can’t be. But most of them are. 
Which reminds me I must wake Horoson and 
have her get some coffee made. We’ll all be the 
better for breakfast.” 

She bustled to the hall as she spoke. Thax- 
ton Vail was standing in the front doorway look¬ 
ing disconsolately out into the sunrise. 

“He went,” reported Vail, turning back into 
the house as Miss Gregg and Doris emerged into 
the hallway. “I’m sorry. For he isn’t fit to. 
He’s still all in.” 

“Who?” asked Doris, her mind still adaze. 

“Clive Creede. This thing has cut him up 
fearfully. He talked a lot of rot about having 
injured me and not having the courage to face 
me again. I told him it was absurd. But he 
went. He wouldn’t even wait for a taxi. Just 
went afoot, leaving his luggage to be sent for. 
Poor chap!” 

Miss Gregg passed on into the kitchen regions. 


208 


The Amateur Inn 


The police, their inspection of the house’s ex¬ 
terior completed, were trooping ponderously up¬ 
stairs, Lawton still trailing along dully in their 
wake. Doris and Vail stood alone in the glory 
of sunrise that flooded the wide old hall. 

For another few moments neither of them 
spoke again, but stood there side by side look¬ 
ing out on the fire-red eastern sky and at the 
marvel of sunrise on trees and lawn. Uncon¬ 
sciously their hands had met and were close 
clasped. It was Doris who spoke at last. 

“It was splendid of you,” she said, “not to be 
angry with Clive for his awful blunders. I—- 
somehow I feel as if I never want to set eyes on 
him again. My father used to say: T can en¬ 
dure a criminal, but I hate a fool.’ I thought it 
was a brutally cynical thing to say. But now— 
well, I can understand what Dad meant.” 

“You mustn’t blame old Clive!” begged Vail. 
“He’s sick and upset and hardly knows what 
he’s saying or doing. He thought I was in trou¬ 
ble. And he came to my defense. If he did it 
bunglingly his muddled brain and not his heart 
went back on him. I’m sorry Miss Gregg spoke 
to him as she did. It cut him up fearfully.” 

“Dear little Aunt Hester!” sighed Doris. 
“She knew us all when we were babies. And 


How One Oath Was Taken 209 

she can’t get over the notion we’re still five years 
old and that we must be scolded when we’re 
bad or when we blunder. She’s—she’s a dar¬ 
ling!” 

“I ought to think so if any one does,” assented 
Vail. “If it hadn’t been for her testimony I’d 
be on my way to jail before now. But to think 
of her having to sit behind my desk all 
those hours! It was an outrage! The dear old 
soul!” 

Doris reddened, made as though to enlighten 
him, then shut her lips in a very definite line. 
Knowing the man as she did, she believed he was 
quite capable of refusing to profit by Miss 
Gregg’s subterfuge, and that he would announce 
at the inquest that the old lady had sacrificed 
the truth in a splendid effort to save him. 
Wherefore, being a wise girl, Doris held her 
peace. 

“In books,” said Vail, presently, “the falsely 
suspected hero thanks the heroine eloquently 
for her trust in him. I’m not going to thank 
you, Doris. But I think you know what your 
glorious trust means to me.” 

She looked down; under the strange light in 
his eyes. And in doing so she realized her hand 
was still interclasped with his. She made a con- 


210 


The Amateur Inn 


scientious effort to withdraw it. But the last 
few hours apparently had sapped her athletic 
young strength. For she lacked the muscular 
power to resist his tender grasp. That grasp 
grew tighter as he said, hurriedly, incoherently: 

“When I get out of this tangle—and Fm not 
going to let you be mixed up in it with me— 
there are all sorts of things I’m going to say to 
you, whether I have the right to or not. Till 
then—” 

He checked himself, his ardent words ending 
in a growl of disgust. Up the driveway toward 
the house was striding Osmun Creede. 


Chapter XIV 
A CLUELESS CLUE 


C REEDE had changed his dark habiliments 
of the preceding night for a suit of flan¬ 
nels. His sagging shoulder and slight limp were 
accentuated by the outdoor garb. Doris drew 
back from the doorway at sight of him. But 
Vail stood where he was. 

“I met Clive down the road,” began Osmun, 
with no salutation, as he mounted the veranda 
steps. “I was driving here to see him—to try 
once more to persuade him to come to Canobie 
with me. I made him drive on home in my run¬ 
about—he wouldn’t come back here with me— 
while I stopped to get his luggage. May I trou¬ 
ble you to have it brought down?” 

He spoke with studied formality, his rasping 
voice icy and aloof. 

“The servants aren’t up yet,” said Vail, no 

more warmly. “If you’ll wait here a minute 

I’ll go and get it for you myself.” 

He did not ask Osmun to enter, nor did 

Creede make any move to do so. 

211 



212 


The Amateur Inn 


As Vail retired into the house on his quest, 
Osmun’s blinking eyes, behind their thick spec¬ 
tacles, caught sight of Doris Lane just within 
the shadow of the hall. 

“Doris,” he said quickly, “if you and Miss 
Gregg want to get away I can have a car of mine 
here inside of twenty minutes. And if you and 
she will stay on at Canobie till Stormcrest is 
ready for you to go back to it I’ll be happier than 
I can say.” 

“Thank you,” she made cold answer. “But 
we are very comfortable here. We—” 

“Here?” echoed Creede. “But, dear girl, 
you can’t possibly stay on, either of you, after 
what’s happened. Clive told me about it just 
now. It’s unbelievable! And I know how eager 
you both must be to get away.” 

“You are entirely mistaken,” she returned. 
“Why should we go away? Of course, poor 
Willis Chase’s death is an awful shock. But he 
was never a very dear friend to any of us, long 
as we’d all known him. And Aunt Hester has 
decided that as soon as the inquest is over, we 
can settle down to life here as well as anywhere 
until Stormcrest is—” 

“I wasn’t thinking of the associations that 
must hang over this house,” explained Creede. 


A Clueless Clue 


213 


“I suppose Chase’s body will be taken away di¬ 
rectly after the inquest. I was thinking of the 
man who is your host. Clive has just left me 
in a huff because I told him I believed Thaxton 
Vail is the only person with the motive or the 
opportunity for killing Chase. It is true. A 
thousand things point to it.” 

“I am afraid nobody whose opinion is worth 
while will agree with you,” she answered. “I 
don’t care to discuss it, please. You’ll excuse 
me, won’t you, if I go in? I must find Aunt 
Hester and—” 

She finished the sentence by turning on her 
heel and disappearing down the dusky hall. 
Halfway in her retreat, she passed Quimby and 
Dr. Lawton and two of the three constables 
coming down from their examination of the up¬ 
per rooms. 

“Anything new, Doctor?” she asked Lawton, 
detaining him as the three others continued 
their progress to the front door. 

The doctor waited until the trio passed out 
of earshot. Then, lowering his voice, he said 
quizzically: 

“The chief’s got another bee in his bonnet 
now. He’s all up in the air over it. He says it 
lands the case against a blank wall.” 


214 The Amateur Inn 

“What do you mean?” she asked, puzzled at 
his hint. 

“Why,” said the doctor, as if ashamed to 
mention so fantastic a thing, “you know there 
was a shoe mark on the window-sill and a scrap 
of mud where the killer had stepped on the sill 
on the way out.” 

“Or in,” suggested Doris. 

“Out,” corrected Lawton. 

“How do you know?” 

“The chief put his magnifying glass over it 
in the strong light just now,” said Dr. Lawton. 
“Then he made us all take a peep. There was 
a faint outline of the ball of a shoe pressed 
against the white woodwork of the sill. And the 
shoe faced outward. That was clear from the 
curve of its outer edge. It was a left foot at 
that. A tennis shoe.” 

“He wore tennis shoes to muffle the sound of 
his steps?” cried Doris. 

“That’s what I thought first,” answered Law- 
ton. “So did the chief. But we both changed 
our minds.” 

“Why?” 

Again the doctor hesitated almost shame¬ 
facedly. 

“It’s so—so queer,” said he. “I can’t expect 


A Clueless Clue 


215 


you to believe it. I didn’t believe it myself till 
the chief made me examine the marks under the 
magnifier and again under his pocket micro¬ 
scope. It was a tennis shoe. Of course Quimby 
began to ransack Thaxton Vail’s boot trees and 
to compare his soles with the size of this. Well, 
the sole-mark on the sill was fully two sizes 
larger than any of Thaxton’s soles.” 

“I don’t see anything unbelievable about 
that,” she commented. “It clears Thax all the 
more completely.” 

“You’re right,” said Lawton. “It clears 
Thax all right as far as it goes. But that isn’t 
the unbelievable part of it. There was a pair of 
tennis shoes under the edge of the bed. Lying 
a yard or so apart and in the shadow. We none 
of us saw them first on account of the light. 
Not till we had tested all Vail’s shoes by that im¬ 
print on the sill. Then the chief hit his toe 
against one of them. He stooped down and 
hauled them out. They had bits of mud still 
sticking to their instep. But the left one had 
much less than the other. They were bigger 
than any of Vail’s shoes. But we didn’t notice 
that till we had tested the left one—the one 
with the least mud on it—against the sill’s im¬ 
print. It fitted exactly. It did more. The sole- 



216 The Amateur Inn 

grips were new rubber with a funny crisscross 
pattern. And those grips were precisely the 
same as the marks on the sill. The microscope 
proved it. The step on the sill was made by 
that very shoe. There couldn’t be any doubt of 
it.” 

“But—” 

“Then came the oddest part,” continued the 
doctor. “You’ve seen Cooley, the night con¬ 
stable? He clerks, part-time, in the new shoe 
store they’ve opened this year at Aura. And he 
grabbed hold of those tennis shoes and gave 
them one good look. Then he vowed they are 
a pair his boss had sent for—all the way from 
New York—to a pedic specialist—for Willis 
Chase.” 

“What?” 

“He said Chase came into the shop last week 
and told them he had been having trouble with 
his arches. He’d had the same trouble once be¬ 
fore. And that other time he had been recom¬ 
mended to a man in New York who made shoes 
that helped him very much. He gave them the 
man’s address and had them send for this pair 
of tennis shoes for him. The shoes came two 
days ago. The clerks all studied them carefully 
because the ‘last’ was so peculiar. Cooley said 


A Clueless Clue 217 

he could swear to them. Then he proved it. 
Just inside the vamp he had scribbled Chase’s 
initials, ‘W. A. C.,’ in pencil, when they came 
to the shop. He had done it to make sure they 
wouldn’t get mixed up with the rest of the stock 
by some green clerk before Chase could call for 
them. And sure enough there were the initials. 
The shoes were Chase’s. Apparently he had 
kicked them off under the edge of the bed when 
he undressed.” 

The girl was staring at him in frank perplex¬ 
ity. 

“But,” she argued, “you just said the left shoe 
of that pair was the same shoe that had made 
the mark on the white woodwork of the window¬ 
sill when the murderer escaped. How could 
it—” 

“That’s the part of it none of us can under¬ 
stand. Chase couldn’t have killed himself and 
then walked to the window with his shoes on 
and stepped on the sill and then come back to 
bed and taken his shoes off and lain down again. 
Yet there isn’t any other solution. Don’t you 
see how crazily impossible the whole thing is? 
And the murderer couldn’t have been wearing 
Chase’s shoes and then stopped on the other 
side of the sill and taken them off and tossed 


218 The Amateur Inn 

them back under the bed. From the position 
of the window they couldn’t possibly have been 
thrown from there to the spot where we found 
them lying.” 

The girl’s puzzled eyes roamed to the 
veranda. Osmun Creede had halted the chief. 
Quimby was talking earnestly to him, presuma¬ 
bly reciting the impossible tale of this latest de¬ 
velopment. 

Perhaps it may have been the effect of the 
light, but Doris as she watched half fancied she 
saw Osmun’s lean face grow greenish white and 
his jaw-muscles twitch convulsively as if in ef¬ 
fort to keep steady his expression. But at once 
the real or fancied look was gone, and he was 
listening stolidly. 

“It must be a cruel blow to him,” she mused 
to herself, “to find still further proof that Thax 
is innocent. No wonder he seems so stricken!” 

Thaxton Vail interrupted her reverie by com¬ 
ing downstairs, carrying Clive’s suitcase and a 
light overcoat and hat. These he bore to the 
veranda and without a word handed them to 
Osmun. 

Creede took them in equal silence. Then as 
he turned to depart he favored Vail with an ex¬ 
pressionless stare. 


A Clueless Clue 


219 


“You’ve got more brain—more craft—than I 
gave you credit for, Thax,” he said abruptly. 
“They’ll never convict you.” 

He descended the steps and made off limp- 
ingly down the drive without waiting for further 
speech. 


Chapter XV 


THE IMPOSSIBLE 


T HE inquest had come and gone. Its jury 
of Aura citizens and two summer folk, 
duly instructed by Lawton as to the form of 
their verdict, gave opinion that Willis Chase had 
met his death at the hands of a person or per¬ 
sons unknown, wielding a sharp instrument (to 
wit, a punch blade of an identified knife) and a 
blunt instrument (i. e., a similarly identified 
metal water carafe). 

That was all. 

Willis Chase’s sister and his brother-in-law 
came over from Great Barrington, where they 
had an all-year home, and they took charge of 
the dead man and his effects. 

By noon Vailholme had settled to a sem¬ 
blance of its former pleasant calm. Doris and 
her aunt were the only remaining guests. 
Thanks to Horoson’s genius, enough servants 
consented to remain at only slightly increased 
subsidy to keep the household machinery in mo¬ 
tion. 


220 


221 


The Impossible 

The actors and spectators of the preceding 
night’s drama had a strange sense of unreality 
as of having been part of some impossible night¬ 
mare. 

Later the numbness would pass and the 
shock’s keener effects would play havoc with 
nerves and thoughts. But for the moment there 
was dull calm. 

To add to the sense of gloom and of dazed 
discomfort, the day was the hottest of the year. 
The thermometer had passed the ninety mark 
before ten o’clock. By twelve it was hovering 
around ninety-seven, and not a vestige of breeze 
mitigated the heat. 

Even in the cool old house the occupants 
sweltered. Outside, ether-waves pulsed above 
the suffering earth. The scratch of locusts 
sounded unbearably dry and shrill. The leaves 
hung lifeless. 

The whole landscape shimmered in the mur¬ 
derous heat. South Mountain, standing benevo¬ 
lent guard beyond the Valley, was haze-ribbed 
and ghostly. The misty green range, to west¬ 
ward, cut by Jacob’s ladder, threw off an emer- 
ald-and-fire reflection that sickened the eye. 
The whole lovely mountain region with its sweet 
valleys swooned depressedly in the awful heat. 


The Amateur Inn 


222 

Directly after the early lunch at Vailholme, 
which nobody wanted, Miss Gregg took anxious 
note of Doris’s drooping weariness and ordered 
her upstairs for a nap. The past twenty hours’ 
events and a sleepless night had taken toll of 
even the girl’s buoyant young strength. Will¬ 
ingly she obeyed the command to rest. 

“I’ll be along presently,” said Miss Gregg, as 
Doris started upstairs. “First, I want to verify 
or disprove a boast of my dear old friend, Osmun 
Vail. Soon after he built this house he told me 
there was one veranda corner where there was 
always a breeze even in the stiflingest weather. 
If I can discover that corner I shall believe in 
miracles. It will be a real sensation to sit for 
five minutes in a breeze on a day like this. 
Come along, Thax, and show me where it 
is.” 

Irritated by her ill-timed flippancy, Vail, with 
some reluctance, left the more comfortable hall 
to follow her to the porch. Macduff had 
stretched his furry bulk flat on the hearthstone 
of the big hall fireplace in the sorry hope of de¬ 
riving some coolness therefrom. As Vail went 
out after Miss Gregg the dog sighed loudly in 
renunciation of comfort, arose, stretched him- 


The Impossible 223 

self fore and aft in true collie fashion, and 
stalked out onto the torrid veranda with the 
two misguided humans. 

For this is the way of a dog. Tired or 
hungry, he will follow into rain or snow or heat 
the man he calls master—sacrificing rest and 
ease and food for the high privilege of being 
with his god. 

Thaxton Vail was not Macduff’s god. Vail 
had had the collie for only a few months. Yet 
man and dog had become good friends. And, 
to his breeder, Clive Creede, the collie nowadays 
gave little more than civility, having apparently 
forgotten Creede and their early chumship 
during the twin’s absence in France. 

Clive had left him at Vailholme. There Vail 
had found him on his own return from overseas. 
When Clive came back a little later Macduff 
accorded him but a tepid welcome. He showed 
no inclination to return home with his old mas¬ 
ter, but exhibited a very evident preference for 
his new abode and his new lord. Wherefore 
Clive had let him stay where he was. 

The heat waves struck through the collie’s 
massive tawny coat now as he followed Vail and 
Miss Gregg out onto the hot veranda. He 


224 


The Amateur Inn 


panted noisily and began to search for some 
nook cooler than the rest of the tiled floor, 
where he might lay him down for the remainder 
of his interrupted snooze. Failing to find it, he 
looked yearningly toward the dim hallway. 

“See there!” proclaimed Miss Gregg. 
“There’s no breezy corner out here to-day. If 
there was, Macduff would have discovered it. 
Trust him to pick out comfort wherever it’s to 
be found! No dog that wasn’t a connoisseur of 
comfort, would have elected to stay on at Vail- 
holme instead of going back to Rackrent Farm 
with Clive. And yet one reads of the faithful 
dogs that prefer to starve and freeze with their 
loved masters rather than live at ease with any 
one else! It was a frightful shock to my ideals 
three months ago when I witnessed the meeting 
between the new-returned Clive and his canine 
chum. I had looked forword to a tear-stirring 
reunion. Why, Mac hardly took the trouble to 
wag his tail. Yet he and Clive used to be in¬ 
separable in the old days. A single year’s ab¬ 
sence made the brute forget.” 

“Mac, old man,” said Vail, rumpling the col¬ 
lie’s ears, “she’s denouncing you. And I’m 
afraid you deserve it. I’ve always read of the 
loyalty of collies. And it jarred me as much as 


The Impossible 225 

it did the rest of them when you passed up Clive 
for me. Never mind. You’re—” 

The clank and chug of an automobile inter¬ 
rupted him. Around the driveway curve ap¬ 
peared a rusty and dusty car of ancient vintage. 
At its wheel was a rusty and dusty man of even 
more ancient vintage—to wit, Dr. Ezra Law- 
ton. 

“Hello!” hailed Thaxton, as the car wheezed 
to a halt under the porte-cochere. “What brings 
you back so soon? I figured you would be 
sleeping all day. Anything new?” 

“Yes and no,” answered Lawton, scrambling 
up the steps to greet Miss Gregg and his host. 
“I met Osmun Creede’s chauffeur as I was 
starting out on a call. I asked him how Clive 
is. He said he didn’t know and that Clive must 
be at Rackrent Farm, for he isn’t at Canobie. I 
got to thinking. And I’m going to take a run 
over there. He’s sick. He isn’t fit to be stay¬ 
ing all alone or just with his two old negroes at 
that gas-reeking house. If he won’t go to Cano¬ 
bie and if he won’t come back here I’m going to 
kidnap him and make him come home with me 
till he’s more on his feet again.” 

“Good old Samaritan!” applauded Vail. 

“But that isn’t why I stopped here on my 


226 The Amateur Inn 

way” pursued Lawton. “I’ve been thinking. 
You told me Clive brought that German army 
knife home to you. I’m wondering if he hap¬ 
pened to bring home several of them as pres¬ 
ents, or if that was the only one. If there are 
more than one it may throw a light on this mud¬ 
dle to find out who has the other or the others. 
If there are several and they’re all alike, it may 
not have been yours that killed Chase.” 

“I see,” answered Vail, adding: “No, he didn’t 
tell me whether that was the only one or not.” 

“Well, is there any mark on yours by which 
you can be sure one of the other knives didn’t 
kill Chase—if there are any other knives like 
it?” 

“No. I can’t help you out even that far. I’m 
sorry. By the way, if you don’t mind, Doctor, 
I’ll go across to Rackrent Farm with you. All 
morning I’ve been feeling remorseful about let- 
ing the poor chap leave here. He’s so sensitive 
he’ll be brooding over the way he bungled in 
trying to help me. I’ll go over and see if I can’t 
make him feel better about it. Perhaps I can 
make him come back. It’s worth a try anyhow.” 

“Come along!” approved the doctor. “Plenty 
of room. Hop in.” 

“I think,” suddenly decided Miss Gregg, “I 


227 


The Impossible 

think I’ll do some hopping, too. I went over 
the boy roughshod. I was cross and tired. I’ll 
tell him I’m sorry. Besides, there may be a bit 
of breeze in driving. There’s none here.” 

As Vail helped her into the tonneau Macduff 
leaped lightly from the veranda steps to the rear 
seat of the car beside her. The collie, like many 
of his breed, was crazily fond of motoring and 
never voluntarily missed a chance for a ride. 
Vail got into the front seat beside Lawton and 
the car rattled on its way. 

Rackrent Farm lay less than a mile from Vail- 
holme’s farther gate. As the car turned into the 
farmhouse’s great neglected front yard and 
stopped there was no sign of life in or about the 
unkempt house as it baked in the merciless sun¬ 
shine. Neither of the old negro servants ap¬ 
peared. Clive did not come to door or window 
in response to the unwonted arrival of visitors 
at his hermitage. An almost ominous stillness 
and vacancy seemed to brood over the whole 
place. 

“I don’t like this,” commented Lawton wor¬ 
riedly as he drew up at the end of the brick path 
which traversed the distance from carriage-drive 
to front door. “And— By the way,” he in¬ 
terrupted himself, “now I remember it. Oz 


228 The Amateur Inn 

said something about the two negroes being 
made sick by the gases and clearing out till the 
house could be aired. Aired! Why every win¬ 
dow and every door in sight is shut!” 

“Clive must be here all alone if his servants 
decamped,” said Vail. “Probably he hasn’t the 
energy to open up the house, sick as he is. 
Come on!” 

He got out with the doctor, turning to help 
Miss Gregg to alight. 

Before she could step to the ground Macduff 
crowded past her in right unmannerly fashion, 
leaping to earth and standing there. 

The collie’s muscles were taut. His muzzle 
was pointed skyward. His sensitive nostrils de¬ 
flated and filled with lightning alternation as 
he sniffed avidly at the lifeless air. He was in 
evident and keen excitement, and he whimpered 
tremulously under his breath. 

Paying no heed to the collie, the three humans 
were starting up the ragged brick walk which 
wound an eccentric way through breast-high 
patches of boxwood to the front door of the 
farmhouse. 

The bricks radiated the scorching heat. The 
boxwood gave back hot fragrance under the 
sun’s untempered rays. The locusts were shrill- 


229 


The Impossible 

ing in the dusty tree-branches above. Over 
everything hung that breath of tense silence. 

Macduff, after one more series of experi¬ 
mental sniffs, flashed up the winding walk past 
the three and toward the front door. 

Within six feet of the door he shied like a 
frightened horse at something which lay in his 
path. And he crouched back irresolutely on 
his furry haunches. 

At the same moment the trio rounded the 
curve of path between two high boxwoods which 
had shut off their view of the bricked space in 
front of the doorway. 

There, sprawling face downward on the red- 
hot bricks at their feet, lay the body of a man. 

Miss Gregg flinched unconsciously and caught 
hold of Vail’s arm. The doctor, his professional 
instincts aroused, ran forward and knelt at the 
man’s side, turning him over so that the body 
lay face up beneath the pitiless furnace-heat of 
the sky. 

The dazzling white glare of sunlight poured 
down upon an upturned dead visage. 

“Clive!” panted Miss Gregg, dizzily. “Oh, 
it’s Clive Creede!” 

“Not a mark on him,” mumbled Vail, who had 
bent beside the doctor over the lifeless body. 


230 


The Amateur Inn 


“Not a mark. Sunstroke, most likely. In his 
weakened state, coming out of the house into 
this inferno of heat— You’re sure he’s dead, 
Doctor?” 

For an instant Lawton did not answer. Then 
he finished his deftly rapid examination and rose 
dazedly to his feet. 

“Yes,” he said, his face a foolish blank of be¬ 
wilderment. “Yes. He is dead. But he has 
been dead less than fifteen minutes. And—it 
wasn’t sunstroke. He—” 

The doctor paused. Then from between his 
amazement-twisted lips he blurted: 

“He froze to death!” 

Miss Gregg cried out in unbelieving wonder. 
Thaxton Vail’s incredulity took a wordier form. 

“Froze to death?” he ejaculated, loud in his 
amaze. “And less than fifteen minutes ago? 
Doctor, the weather’s turned your head. This 
is the hottest day of the year. Out here in the 
sun the mercury must be somewhere around a 
hundred and twenty. Froze to death? Why, 
it’s im—” 

“I tell you,” reiterated Dr. Lawton, mopping 
the streams of sweat from his forehead, “I tell 
you HE FROZE TO DEATH!” 


Chapter XVI 
THE COLLIE TESTIFIES 


I N the moment of stark dumfounded hush 
that followed Dr. Lawton’s verdict the col¬ 
lie created a diversion on his own account. 

For the past few seconds he had stood once 
more at gaze, muzzle upraised, sniffing the still 
air. The impulse which had sent him charging 
toward the house had been deflected at sight of 
the body on the brick pathway, and he had 
checked his rush. 

Perhaps it was the all-pervasive fragrance of 
the boxwood bushes on every side, bakingly hot 
under the sun’s glare, that confused the scent 
he had caught. In any event he was sniffing 
once more to catch the lost odor which had 
guided him in his short hurricane flight. 

Then he varied this by breaking into a fan¬ 
fare of discordantly excited barks. 

The racket smote on its hearers with a shock 
of horror. Thaxton Vail caught the dog by the 
collar, sternly bidding him to be silent. Trem¬ 
bling, straining to break from the grasp, Mac¬ 
duff obeyed the fierce command. 

231 


232 


The Amateur Inn 


At least he obeyed so far as to cease his clan¬ 
gor of high-pitched barks. But he did not cease 
for one instant to struggle to liberate himself 
from the restraining grip. 

Furiously his claws dug into the brick-cran¬ 
nies, seeking a foothold whereby he might exert 
enough leverage to break free. Vail, with an¬ 
other sharp command, dragged him to one side, 
meaning to tie him by means of a handkerchief 
to one of the bush stems. 

The collie’s forefeet clawed wildly in air as 
they were lifted momentarily off ground. And 
one of the flying paws brushed sharply across 
the forehead of the dead man. 

There was a cry from Miss Gregg followed by 
a gasp from both men. The curved claws had 
chanced to catch in Creede’s thick tangle of 
hair that clung dankly to the forehead. 

Under that momentary tug the hair gave way. 
A mass of it as large as a man’s hand came loose 
with the receding forepaw of the dog. And lo, 
the dead man’s forehead was as bald as a new¬ 
born baby’s! 

The change wrought by the removal of the 
curling frontal hair made a startling difference 
in the lifeless face. It was Miss Gregg who ex¬ 
claimed shudderingly: 


The Collie Testifies 233 

“That’s not Clive! That’s—that’s Osmun 
Creede!” 

“Good Lord!” babbled the doctor. “You’re 
—you’re right! It’s Oz!” 

Vail, still clutching the frantically struggling 
collie, stared in silence. It was uncanny—the 
difference made by that chance removal of the 
ingenious toupee. Instantly the man on the 
ground before them lost his resemblance to 
Clive and became Clive’s twin brother. 

Lawton, catching sight of an object which the 
shift of posture had caused to slide into view in 
the prostrate man’s upper coat pocket, drew 
forth a spectacle-case. 

In view of the amazing identification the in¬ 
truders wholly forgot for the moment Dr. Law¬ 
ton’s ridiculously incredible claim that Creede 
had frozen to death on the hottest day of the 
year. 

They had even forgotten the heat that poured 
down upon them in perilous intensity. They 
forgot everything except this revelation that the 
supposed Clive Creede, their friend, was Osmun 
Creede whom they had detested. 

Macduff strained and whimpered unheeded 
as Vail still held him with that subconscious 
grip on his collar. All three were staring open- 



234 The Amateur Inn 

mouthed at the sprawling figure on the bricks. 
For a space nobody spoke. 

Then, with a start, as of one who comes out of 
a trance, Miss Gregg burst into hysterically 
rapid speech. 

“I knew it all the time!” she volleyed. “I 
knew it all the time—clear in the back of my 
head where the true thoughts grow—the 
thoughts that are so true they don’t dare force 
themselves to the front of the mind where the 
everyday thinking is done. I knew it! There 
were no twins at all. There was only Os- 
mun!” 

The two others blinked stupidly at her. She 
rattled on with growing certainty: 

“Osmun was the only one of the Creede twins 
to come back alive from France. I know it. 
There is no Clive Creede. There never has been 
since the war. He must have died over there. 
Stop and think, both of you! Did you ever see 
the two twins together since Osmun came from 
overseas? Not once. Did you?” 

“Good Lord!” sputtered the doctor. “Of 
course I have. Often. At—at least, I—I’m 
sure I must have. I—” 

“She is right,” interposed Vail in something 
like awe, “I swear I believe she is right. I 


The Collie Testifies 


235 


never stopped to think about it. But I can’t 
remember seeing them together once since—” 
“It was Osmun, alone!” declared Miss 
Gregg. “He played both roles. Though heaven 
alone knows why he should have done such a 
queer thing. And he worked it cleverly. Oh, 
Oz always had brains! Clive was supposed to 
live here at Rackrent Farm, while Oz lived at 
Canobie—those two who had never lived apart 
before! That was to make the dual role pos¬ 
sible. He couldn’t have pretended they lived in 
the same house without the servants or some 
guest discovering there was only one of them. 
But a couple of miles apart he could divide his 
time between Rackrent and Canobie in a plausi¬ 
ble enough way.” 

“But—” 

“Bald and lame and with a stoop and wearing 
thick spectacles he was Osmun. Erect and with 
a mass of hair falling over his forehead and no 
glasses he was Clive. There was no need to 
make up the face. They had been twins.” 

“It’s ingenious,” babbled Dr. Lawton, fight¬ 
ing for logic and for the commonplace. “But it 
doesn’t make sense. Why, I—” 

“It will make sense when we get it cleared 
up!” she promised. “And now that we’ve got 




236 The Amateur Inn 

hold of both ends of the string we’ll untangle it 
in short order. When we do, we’ll find who 
killed Willis Chase and who stole our jewelry. 
That isn’t all we’ll discover either. We’ll— 
drat the miserable collie!” she broke off. “Has 
he gone crazy? Make him be still, Thax!” 

For Macduff, failing to get free by struggling 
and by appealing whimpers, had now renewed 
his salvo of barking. Vail spoke harshly to the 
dog, tightening his hold on the collar. 

The brief interruption switched the current 
of Dr. Lawton’s thoughts back from this mystery 
of identity to a more startling and more profes¬ 
sionally interesting mystery—to that of a man 
who had achieved the garishly impossible ex¬ 
ploit of freezing to death in a sun-scourged tem¬ 
perature of 120 degrees or more. Again the doc¬ 
tor knelt by the body, swiftly renewing his ex¬ 
amination. 

But even before he did so he knew he could 
not have been mistaken in his diagnosis. 

Lawton was a Berkshire physician of the old 
school. He had plied his hallowedly needful 
profession as country doctor among those tum¬ 
bles of mountains and valleys for nearly half a 
century.. 

Winter and summer he had ridden the rutted 


. The Collie Testifies 237 

byroads on his errands of healing. Often in 
olden days and sometimes even now he had been 
called on to toil over unfortunates who had lost 
their way in blizzards with the mercury far be¬ 
low zero, and who had frozen to death before 
help could come. Every phase of freezing to 
death was professionally familiar to him. The 
phenomena were few and simple. They could 
not possibly be mistaken. 

And, past all chance of doubt, he knew now 
that Osmun Creede had frozen to death—that 
he had died from freezing in spite of the tropical 
torridity of the day. 

The fact that the thermometer was register¬ 
ing above one hundred in the shade and was 
many degrees higher here in the unchecked sun- 
glare—this did not alter the far more tre¬ 
mendous fact that Osmun Creede had just died 
from freezing. / 

Lawton raised the rigidly frozen body in 
order to slip off from it the coat which impeded 
his work of inspection. Deftly he pulled the 
coat from the shoulders, the sleeves turning in¬ 
side out in the process, and he tossed it aside. 

The flung coat landed on a twig-tangle of the 
nearest box-bush, hanging upside down from the 
twigs. From its inner pocket, thus reversed, 



238 The Amateur Inn 

fell a fat wallet. It flapped wide open to the 
bricks, the jar of contact shaking from its com¬ 
partments three or four objects which glittered 
like colored fire as they caught and cast back a 
million sun-rays. 

Miss Gregg swooped down on the nearest of 
these glowing bits, retrieving it and holding it 
triumphantly out to Thaxton. 

“Doris’s marquise ring!” she announced. 
“And there’s my pearl-and-onyx brooch down 
there by your left toe. I said last night Oz 
Creede was the thief. I knew he couldn’t possi¬ 
bly be. But that made me know all the more 
he was.” 

She stooped to gather up other items of the 
scattered loot. Vail bent down to help her. In 
doing so, instinctively, he slackened his hold on 
Macduff’s collar. 

The dog took instant advantage of the chance 
to escape. Never pausing, he flashed toward 
the shut front door of the farmhouse. No time 
or need now to bark or to struggle. He was 
free—free to follow up the marvelous news that 
his sense of smell had imparted to him. 

Like a whirlwind he sprang up the hot brick 
walk to the closed door. 


The Collie Testifies 239 

“What on earth—?” began Miss Gregg, look¬ 
ing vexedly from her task of jewel-collecting 
as the flying collie sped past her. 

Then the half-uttered question died on her 
lips. 

For as Macduff cleared the wide flagstone in 
front of the threshold the farmhouse door swung 
open from within. 

In the doorway stood—or rather swayed—a 
man. 

The man was Clive Creede. 

The three intruders gaped in dazed unbelief 
at him. Vail and Miss Gregg were too stupefied 
to rise from the ground, but continued to crouch 
there, the recovered plunder in their stiffening 
fingers. 

Lawton blinked idiotically across the body of 
Osmun, his old face slack with crass incredul¬ 
ity. 

Yes, there in the threshold swayed Clive 
Creede. He was thin to emaciation, his hair 
was gray at the temples, and his face was grayer. 
He seemed about to topple forward from sheer 
weakness. His hollow eyes surveyed the group 
almost unseeingly. The man looked ten years 
older than did his dead brother. 


240 


The Amateur Inn 


With a scream of agonized rapture—a scream 
all but human in its stark intensity—the collie 
hurled himself upon his long-absent master. 

Leaping high, he sought to lick the haggard 
face. His white forepaws beat an ecstatic tattoo 
on Clive’s chest. Dropping to earth, he swirled 
around Creede in whirlwind circles stomach to 
the ground, wakening the hot echoes with fran¬ 
tic yelps and shrieks of delight. 

Then, sinking down at Clive’s feet, he licked 
the man’s dusty boots and gazed up into his 
face in blissful adoration. The dog was shaking 
as with ague. 

After two years’ absence his god had come 
back to him. He had caught Clive’s scent— 
blurredly and uncertainly—through the sharp 
fragrance of the boxwood and the stillness of 
the air—as far off as the gateway. Every 
inch of the houseward journey had confirmed 
more and more his recognition of it. 

Then, just as he located the scent and sprang 
forward to find the unseen master, Thaxton Vail 
had collared him and checked his quest. 

But now he had come again to the feet of the 
man he worshiped. Henceforth Thaxton and 
all the rest of the world would be as nothing to 
the dog. He had re-found his god—the god for 




The Collie Testifies 


241 


whom he had grieved these two dreary years— 
the god who most assuredly was not the “Clive 
Creede” that had imposed himself upon these 
mere humans. 

Lifting his head timidly, yearningly, Macduff 
stood up once more. Rearing himself, he placed 
his forepaws again on Clive’s chest and peered 
up into the man’s face. The collie was sobbing 
in pure happiness, sobbing in a strangely human 
fashion. His god had been brought back to 
him. 

Clive laid two thin and trembling hands on 
the silken head. 

“Mac!” he murmured huskily. “Mac, old 
friend!” 

At sound of the dear voice the collie pro¬ 
ceeded once more to go insane. Capering, danc¬ 
ing, thundrously barking, he circled deliriously 
about his master. 

But Clive was no longer heeding him. His 
hollow gaze rested now on the three humans 
who were clustered about his dead brother—the 
three who still eyed him in vacant disbelief. 

From them his glance strayed to Osmun 
Creede. And again Clive’s white lips parted. 

“He’s dead,” he croaked. “He’s—he’s—fro¬ 
zen—frozen to death. I—” 


242 


The Amateur Inn 


He got no further. Attempting to take a for¬ 
ward step, he reeled drunkenfy. As he pitched 
earthward Thaxton Vail sprang toward him, 
catching the inert body in his arms as it fell. 


Chapter XVII 
UNTANGLING THE SNARL 


T WO days later, at Vailholme, Dr. Lawton 
stumped downstairs to the study where 
Thaxton and Doris and Miss Gregg awaited 
him. Miss Gregg, by the way, chanced to be in 
an incredibly bad humor from indigestion. 
Every one knew it. 

Thrice a day had the doctor come to Vail- 
holme since he and Thaxton had borne the un¬ 
conscious Clive thither from Rackrent Farm. A 
nurse had been summoned, and for forty-eight 
hours she and Lawton had wrought over the 
senseless man. 

This morning Clive had awakened. But, by 
the nurse’s stern orders, he had not been allowed 
to talk or even to see his housemates until the 
doctor should arrive. 

For an hour Lawton had been closeted with 
the invalid. The others greeted his descent 
from the sick room in eager excitement. 

“Well? Well? How is he?” demanded Miss 

Gregg with the imperious note Lawton detested, 

243 


244 The Amateur Inn 

firing her queries before the doctor was fairly in 
the study. “Is he sane? Did he know you? 
Speak up, man!” 

“Sane?” echoed the doctor a bit testily. “Of 
course he’s sane. Why shouldn’t he be? He 
always was, even in the old days. And why 
shouldn’t he remember me? Didn’t I bring him 
into the world? And haven’t I just brought him 
back into it?” 

“Ezra Lawton!” snapped the old lady, indig¬ 
nant at his tone. “You must have been born 
boorish and exasperating. Nobody could have 
acquired so much boorishness and crankiness in 
seventy short years. You’re—” 

“Auntie!” begged Doris. “Please! Doctor, 
we’ve been waiting so anxiously! Won’t you 
tell us all about him? We—” 

Dr. Lawton thawed at her pleading voice and 
look. 

“The nurse tells me he came out of the coma 
clear-headed and apparently quite himself—ex¬ 
cept, of course, for much weakness,” he replied, 
pointedly addressing the girl and ignoring her 
glowering aunt. “By the time I got here he was 
a little stronger. Yet I didn’t encourage him to 
talk or to excite himself in any way. However, 
he seemed so restless when I told him to lie still 


Untangling the Snarl 245 

and be quiet that I thought it would do him less 
harm to ask and answer questions than to lie 
there and fume with impatience. So I told him 
—a little. And I let him tell me—a little.” 

He paused. Miss Gregg glowered afresh. 
Doris clasped her hands in appeal. Lawton re¬ 
sumed: 

“And together with the letters and so on that 
I found in his satchel when I went through 
Rackrent Farm again yesterday I think I’ve 
pieced out at least the first part of the story. I 
wouldn’t let him go into many details. And 
when he came to accounting for his presence at 
Rackrent he grew so feverish and excited that 
I gave him a hypo and walked out. That part 
of the yarn will have to keep till he’s a good deal 
stronger.” 

“In brief/’ commented Miss Gregg, acidly, 
“you pumped the poor lad, till you had him all 
jumpy and queer in the head, and then you got 
scared and doped him. A doctor is a man who 
throws medicines of which he knows little into a 
system of which he knows nothing. I only won¬ 
der you didn’t end your chat with Clive by telling 
him you couldn’t answer for his life unless you 
operated on him for something-or-other inside of 
two hours. That is the usual patter, isn’t it?” 



246 The Amateur Inn 

“He has been operated on already/’ returned 
Lawton in cold disdain. 

Then maddeningly he stopped and affected 
to busy himself with shaking down his clinical 
thermometer. 

“Operated on?” repeated Doris, as her aunt 
scorned to come into range by asking the ques¬ 
tion. “What for?” 

Again her pleading voice and eyes won Law- 
ton from his grievance. 

“If I can do it without a million impertinent 
interruptions, my dear,” said he, “I’ll tell you 
and Thax all about it.” 

“Go ahead!” implored Vail. 

“As I say,” began the doctor, “I inferred 
much of this from the letters and other papers I 
found in Clive’s bag at the farm. He cor¬ 
roborated or corrected the theory I had formed. 
Briefly, he was wounded at Chateau-Thierry. 
Shell fragment lodging almost at the juncture of 
the occipital and left frontal. Crushed the su¬ 
tures for a space of perhaps—” 

“I’m quite sure there is a medical dictionary 
somewhere in the library,” suggested Miss 
Gregg with suspicious sweetness. “And later 
I promise myself a rare treat looking up such 


Untangling the Snarl 247 

spicy definitions as ‘occipital’ and ‘sutures.’ In 
the meantime—” 

Dr. Lawton shifted his position in such a way 
as to bring his angular shoulder between his face 
and that of his tormentor. Then he went on: 

“He was badly wounded. A bit of bone splin¬ 
ter pressed down on the brain—if part of my 
audience can grasp such simple language as that 
—completely destroying memory. After the 
Armistice, Osmun made a search for him and 
found him in a base hospital, not only in pre¬ 
carious bodily health but entirely lacking in rec¬ 
ollection of any past event. He did not so much 
as recall his own name. He didn’t recognize 
Oz or know where he was nor how he got there.” 

“Poor old Clive!” muttered Vail. 

“Oz brought him back to America. For some 
reason that I can’t even guess—it was at that 
point Clive began to get feverish and incoherent 
—Oz smuggled him across the Continent and 
‘planted’ him in a sanitarium up in Northern 
California. He placed him there under another 
name, paying for his keep, of course, and leav¬ 
ing word that every care was to be taken of 
him. The sanitarium doctors held out abso¬ 
lutely no hope for his mental recovery, though 


248 The Amateur Inn 

his physical health began to improve almost at 
once.” 

“To judge by the way he looks now,” com¬ 
mented Vail, “his physical health has gone 
pretty far in the opposite direction since 
then.” 

“It’s had enough setbacks to make it do that,” 
said the doctor. “But he’ll pull through finely 
now. He’s turned the corner.” 

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” apologized 
Thaxton. “Fire away.” 

“Well, with Clive disposed of—presumably 
for life—Osmun comes back here to Aura,” pro¬ 
ceeded Lawton. “And here for some reason I 
can’t make out, he elects to be both himself and 
Clive. His own long illness—trench fever, lay¬ 
men call it—had left him partly bald. He 
stopped in New York and had a wigmaker-artist 
build him a toupee that corrected the only dif¬ 
ference in appearance between Clive and him¬ 
self. To make the change still greater he bought 
those thick-lensed specs. I have tested them. The 
lenses are of plain glass, slightly smoked. And 
he cultivated a limp and a sag of the shoulder. 
Then he embarked on his Jekyll-Hyde career 
among us.” 

“It didn’t seem possible when you people told 


Untangling the Snarl 249 

me about it first,” said Doris, as the doctor 
paused again for dramatic effect. “But the more 
I’ve thought it over the easier it seemed. You 
see, their faces were just alike. They both 
knew the same people and the same places and 
Osmun knew every bit of Clive’s history and as¬ 
sociations and tastes and mannerisms. The only 
things he had to keep remembering all the time 

V 

were the disguise and the shoulder and the limp 
and to take that horrid rasp out of his voice 
when he impersonated Clive. He— Go on, 
please, doctor. I’m sorry I interrupted again.” 

“That’s all I actually know about Osmun’s 
part in it,” resumed the doctor. “And a lot of 
that is only deduction. But I do know about 
Clive. At the sanitarium he had tried to walk 
out through a door in the dark. The door 
proved to be a second story window. Clive 
landed on his head in the courtyard below. 
They picked him up for dead. Then they found 
he was still breathing, but his skull was bashed 
in. There was just one chance in three that a 
major operation might save him. There was no 
time to communicate with Osmun, even if he 
had given them his right name and address— 
which he had not. So they operated. The 
operation was a success—” 



250 The Amateur Inn 

\ 

“And in spite of that the patient lived?” 
asked Miss Gregg, innocently. 

Paying no heed to her, Dr. Lawton continued: 

“Clive came to himself as sound mentally as 
ever he had been and with his memory entirely 
restored. He remembered everything. Even to 
Osmun’s sticking him away in the sanitarium at 
the other side of the world. His first impulse 
was to telegraph the good news to his twin. 
Then he got to thinking and to wondering. He 
couldn’t understand Oz’s queer actions toward 
him. And he meant to find the answer for him¬ 
self.” 

“That’s just like him!” commented Vail. 
“He would.” 

“He didn’t want to give Oz a chance to build 
up some plausible lie or to interfere in any way 
with his getting home,” said Lawton. “At last, 
after all these years, he seems to have caught 
just an inkling of his precious twin brother’s real 
character. He made up his mind to come home 
unheralded and to find out how matters stood. 
It wasn’t normal or natural, he figured, for Oz to 
have taken him clear to California and put him 
in that sanitarium under an assumed name. 
There was mischief in it somewhere. He de¬ 
cided to find where. 


Untangling the Snarl 251 

“He had only the clothes he wore and his 
father’s big diamond ring—the one your great- 
uncle gave old Creede, you remember, Thax. 
Clive never wore it. But he used to carry it 
around his neck in a chamois bag because it had 
been his father’s pride. Well, as soon as he 
could walk again, he sneaked out of the sanita¬ 
rium, beat his way to San Francisco on a freight, 
and hunted up a pawnbroker. The pawnbroker, 
of course, supposed he had stolen the ring, so he 
gave Clive only a fraction of its value. But it 
was enough cash to bring him east. 

“He was still weak and shaky, and the long, 
hot, cross-continent ride didn’t strengthen him. 
In fact, he seems to have kept up on his nerve. 
He got to New York and thence to Stockbridge, 
and hired a taxi to bring him over to Aura. He 
knew he could trust the two old negroes at Rack- 
rent Farm to tell him the truth about what was 
going on. For they were devoted to him from 
the time he was a baby. So he had the taxi 
drive him straight to the farm before hunting 
up Oz or any of the rest of us. And there, ap¬ 
parently, he walked straight in on Oz himself. 

“That’s as far as he got—or, rather, as far 
as I’d let him get—in his story just now. For 
he grew so excited I was afraid he’d have a re- 


The Amateur Inn 


252 

lapse. I didn’t even dare ask him what he 
meant that day by mumbling to us that Osmun 
had frozen to death. It’s queer he should have 
known, though. Unless—” 

“Unless what?” urged Doris, as Lawton 
paused frowning. 

He made no reply, but continued to stare 
frowningly at the floor. 

“Unless what, doctor?” coaxed Doris. 

Dr. Lawton looked up, impatiently, shook his 
head and made answer: 

“I don’t know, my dear. I don’t actually 
know. And until I do know I am not going 
to make a fool of myself and let myself in for 
further ridicule from your amiable aunt by tell¬ 
ing my theory. I formed that theory when I 

examined every inch of Rackrent farmhouse 

% 

yesterday—the time I found Clive’s satchel. But 
it’s such a wild notion—and besides the thing 
was smashed and empty and there was no proof 
that it ever had contained what I guessed it 
had—” 

“What thing, doctor?” wheedled Doris, in her 
most seductive manner. “What thing was 
smashed and empty? And what did you guess’ 
it had contained? Tell us, won’t you, please?” 


Untangling the Snarl 253 

“Not till Clive is strong enough to tell all his 
story,” firmly refused Lawton. “Then if he 
corroborates what I—” 

“In other words, Doris, my child,” explained 
Miss Gregg, with gentle unction, “when Clive 
tells—if he ever does—our wise friend here will 
say: ‘Just what I conjectured from the very 
first.’ It is quite simple. Many a medical repu¬ 
tation has risen to towering heights on less foun¬ 
dation. My dear, you are still at the heavenly 
age when all things are possible and most of 
them are highly desirable. Ezra Lawton and I 
have slumped to the period when few things 
are desirable and none of those few are possible. 
So don’t grudge him his petty chance to score 
an intellectual hit. Even if he should be forced 
to score it without the intellect.” 

The old lady was undergoing one of her re¬ 
current spells of chronic dyspepsia this day—by 
reason of dalliance with lobster Newburg at din¬ 
ner the night before. 

At such crises her whole nature abhorred doc¬ 
tors of all degrees for their failure to prevent 
such attacks when she had refused to live up to 
their prescribed dietary. 

Especially in these hours of keen discomfort 


254 The Amateur Inn 

did she rejoice to berate and affront her valued 
old friend, Dr. Lawton, he being the representa¬ 
tive of his profession nearest to hand. 

And always her verbal assaults, as to-day, 
had the instant effect of making him forget his 
reverent affection for her, turning him at once 
into her snarling foe. 

Doris, well versed in the recurrent strife 
symptoms between the old cronies, came as 
usual to the rescue. 

“Doctor,” she sighed admiringly, “I think it’s 
just wonderful of you to have pieced all this to¬ 
gether and to have made Clive tell it without 
overexciting him. Auntie thinks it’s just as 
wonderful as I do. Only—” 

“Only,” supplemented the still ruffled Lawton, 
“she doesn’t care to jeopardize her card in the 
Troublemakers’ Union by admitting it?” 

“Personally,” said Miss Gregg with bitterly 
smiling frankness, “I’d rather be a Trouble¬ 
maker than an Operation-fancier. However, 
that is quite a matter of opinion. And medical 
books have placed ignorance within the reach of 
all. Medical colleges teach that sublime truth: 
‘When in doubt don’t let anybody know it!’ 
But—” 

“It’s a miracle,” intervened Vail, coming to 


Untangling the Snarl 255 

the aid of peace, “that poor old Clive could have 
come through this as he has. Wounded, then 
falling out of a window, then—whatever may 
have happened to him when he met Oz—and 
getting well in spite of it. By the way, sir, has 
he asked to see any of us?” 

Dr. Lawton was stalking majestically door- 
ward. Now on the threshold he paused. His 
jarred temper rejoiced at the chance to pick out 
any victim at all to make uncomfortable. 

“Yes,” he returned, “he has. He asked for 
Doris here not less than eight times while I was 
up there.” 

The girl flushed hotly. Vail went slightly 
pale. Then he followed the doctor hastily from 
the room on pretense of seeing the visitor to the 
front door. Doris and Miss Gregg looked si¬ 
lently at each other. 

“Youth is stranger than fiction,” said the old 
lady, cryptically. 

Doris, scarlet and uncomfortable, made no 
reply. And presently Thaxton Vail came back 
into the room. 

“Doris,” he said very bravely indeed, “Dr. 
Lawton says it won’t do Clive any harm at all 
to see you after he has slept off the quarter- 
grain of morphia he gave him. He says it may 


256 The Amateur Inn 

• i 

do him a lot of good. I’ll tell the nurse to let 
you know when he wakes. 5 ’ 

Then, not trusting himself to say more lest he 
lose the pleasant smile he maintained with such 
sore-hearted difficulty, he went quickly out 
again, hurrying upstairs on his errand to the 
nurse. 

His soul was heavy within him. Before the 
war he knew Clive Creede had been his danger¬ 
ous rival for Doris’s favor. Time and again 
Vail had had to battle against pettiness in order 
to avoid rancor toward this lifelong chum of 
his. 

Then, after the supposed Clive’s return from 
overseas, Vail had been ashamed of his own joy 
in noting that Doris’s interest in Creede seemed 
to have slackened, although the man himself was 
still eagerly her suitor. 

And now—now that the real Clive was back 
—surrounded by the glamour of mystery and of 
unmerited misfortune—the real Clive, whose 
first question had been for Doris—Thaxton 
Vail’s air-castles and the golden dreams that 
peopled them seemed tottering to a crash. 


Chapter XVIII 
WHEN HE CAME HOME 


Y ES, manfully Vail climbed the stairs to the 
anteroom, where the severely stiff and 
iodoform-perfumed nurse sat primly reading 
while her patient slept. Across the threshold of 
the sick chamber lay stretched a tawny and 
fluffy bulk. 

There, since the moment Clive Creede had 
been carried in, had lain Macduff. At nobody’s 
orders would he desert his self-chosen post of 
guard to his stricken master. He ate practically 
nothing, and he drank little more. 

Several times a day Vail dragged him from 
the doorway with gentle force and put him out 
of the house. But ever, by hook or crook, the 
collie made his way in again, and fifteen minutes 
later he would be pressing close against the door 
on whose farther side was Clive. 

Again and again he tried to slip past nurse 
or doctor into the sickroom. Again and again 
nurse or doctor trod painfully on him in the 
dark as he lay there. 


257 


258 The Amateur Inn 

But not once did the collie relax his vigil. 
His master had come back to him. And Mac¬ 
duff was not minded to risk losing him again by 
stirring away from his room. 

Vail stooped now and patted the disconsolate 
head. To the nurse he suggested: 

“As soon as Mr. Creede wakes up, let Mac¬ 
duff go in and see him, won’t you? He loves 
the dog, and I know him well enough to be sure 
it won’t hurt him to have his old chum lie at his 
bedside instead of out here.” 

“Dogs carry germs,” sniffed the nurse in 
strong disapproval. 

“They carry friendliness, too,” he reminded 
her, “and companionship in loneliness. And 
they carry comfort and loyalty and fun. We 
know they carry those. We are still in doubt 
about the germs. Let him in there when Mr. 
Creede wakes. If it were I, I’d rather have my 
chum-dog come to my bedside when I’m sick 
than any human I know—except one. And 
that reminds me—Dr. Lawton would like you 
to notify Miss Lane as soon as Mr. Creede is 
wide awake. The doctor says Creede has been 
asking for her and that it’ll do him good to see 
her.” 

Vail moved wearily away. He felt all at once 



When He Came Home 259 

tired and old, and he realized for the first time 
that life is immeasurably bigger than are the 
people who must live it. 

The world seemed to him gray and profitless. 
The future stretched away before him, dreary 
and barren as a rainy sea. 

For these be the universal symptoms that go 
with real or imaginary obstacles in the love race, 
especially when the racer is well under thirty 
and is in love for the first time. 

Two hours later as Thaxton sat alone in his 
study laboriously trying to occupy himself in the 
monthly expense accounts he heard the nurse go 
to Doris’s room. 

He heard (and thrilled to) the girl’s light 
footfall as she followed the white-gowned guard¬ 
ian along the upper hallway and into the sick 
room. He heard the door close behind her. Its 
impact seemed to crush the very heart of him. 

Then, being very young and very egregiously 
in love, Thaxton buried his face in his hands 
above the littered desk—and prayed. 

It was nearly half an hour before he heard the 
door reopen and heard Doris leave. 

Her step was slower now. In spite of Vail’s 
momentary hope she did not pause when she 
reached the top of the stairs, but kept straight 


260 The Amateur Inn 

on to her own room, entering it and shutting the 
door softly behind her. 

That night the nurse reported gayly to Vail 
that the invalid seemed fifty per cent better and 
that he had actually been hungry for his supper. 
Wherefore—as though one household could hold 
only a certain amount of hunger—Thaxton 
failed to summon up the remotest semblance of 
appetite for his own well-served dinner. 

But he talked very much and very gayly at 
times throughout the meal, and he even forced 
himself to meet Doris’s gaze in exaggeratedly 
fraternal fashion and to laugh a great deal more 
than Miss Gregg’s acid witticisms demanded. 

Macduff, too, graced the evening meal with 
his presence for the first time since Clive’s ar¬ 
rival. For hours he had lain beside his master’s 
bed, curled happily within reach of Clive’s ca¬ 
ressing hand. The dog’s deadly fear was gone 
—the fear lest he should never again be allowed 
to see and to be with his god. 

Clive was still there and was still his chum. 
And the barrier door was no longer closed. Thus 
Macduff at last had scope to think of other 
things than of the terror of losing his rediscov¬ 
ered deity. Among these other things was the 
fact that he was ravenously hungry and that at 




When He Came Home 261 

Thaxton’s side at the dinner table there was 
much chance for tidbits. 

Hence he attended dinner, lying again on the 
floor at Vail’s left for the servants to stub their 
toes over as of yore. 

“So we have the sorrowing Macduff among us 
once more!” remarked Miss Gregg. “That is 
what I call a decidedly limited rapture. Es¬ 
pecially when he registers fleas. I verily believe 
he is the most popular and populous flea-cafe¬ 
teria in all dogdom. Why, that collie—!” 

“Oh, I love to see him lying there again, so 
happy and proud!” spoke up Doris, tossing him 
a fragment of chicken. “Dear old Mac!” 

Thaxton’s smile became galvanic and forced. 
His heart smote painfully against his ribs. 

“Love me, love my dog!” he quoted, misera¬ 
bly, to himself. 

Under cover of Miss Gregg’s railings against 
long-haired canines that scratched fleas and lay 
where people stumbled over them Vail lapsed 
into gloomy brooding. 

“A week ago,” he told himself, chewing mor¬ 
bidly on the bitter reflection, “a week ago Mac¬ 
duff cared more for me than for any one else. 
Doris certainly cared no more for any one else 
than she cared for me. And to-night—! 



262 The Amateur Inn 

Neither of them has a thought for any one but 
Clive Creede. The half-gods may as well put 
up the shutters when the whole gods arrive. 
Funny old world! . . . Rotten old world!” 

“Just as there are only two kinds of children 
—bad children and sick children,” Miss Gregg 
was orating, “so there are only two kinds of 
dogs—fleasome dogs and gleesome dogs. Flea- 
some dogs that scratch all the time and glee- 
some dogs that jump up on you with muddy 
paws. Isn’t that true, Thax? Now admit it!” 

Hearing his own name as it penetrated, shrilly, 
far down into his glum reverie, Vail recalled 
himself jerkily to his duties as host. 

“Admit it?” he echoed fervently. “Indeed I 
do! I’d have acted just the same way myself. 
I think you did the only thing any self-respect¬ 
ing woman could have done under the circum¬ 
stances. Of course, it was tough on the others. 
But that was their lookout, not yours.” 

He sank back into his black brooding; all ob¬ 
livious of the glare of angry bewilderment 
wherewith the old lady favored him and of 
Doris’s wondering stare. 

Next day Dr. Lawton declared Clive vastly 
improved. The following morning he pro¬ 
nounced him to be firm-set on the road to quick 


When He Came Home 263 

recovery. On the third day he ventured to let the 
convalescent tell his whole story, and Clive was 
none the worse for the ordeal of its telling. 

The doctor, going downstairs again, found 
awaiting him two members of the same trio who 
had listened to his earlier recital. Doris had 
driven in to Aura for the mail and had not yet 
returned. Thus only her aunt and Thaxton 
greeted the doctor on his descent from the sick 
room. 

Thanks to a scared course of diet, Miss Gregg 
had subdued her gastric insurrection and there¬ 
fore had lost her savage yearning to insult all 
doctors in general and Dr. Lawton in particular. 

She hung upon his words to-day with flatter¬ 
ing attention, not once interrupting or taking ad¬ 
vantage of a single opening for tart repartee. 

The doctor’s spirits burgeoned under such 
civility. He told his story well and with due 
dramatic emphasis, seldom repeating himself 
more than thrice at most in recounting any of 
its details. 

Stripped of these repetitions and of a few 
moral and philosophical sidelights of his own, 
the doctor’s narrative may be summed up thus: 

Having safely disposed of his twin in the 


264 


The Amateur Inn 


California sanitarium, Osmun Creede returned 
to Aura. There he resolved to begin life afresh. 
He had several good reasons for doing this. 

No one knew better than he that he had made 
himself the most unpopular man in the neigh¬ 
borhood, and, as with most unpopular men, his 
greatest secret yearning was for popularity. In 
the guise of his popular brother this seemed not 
only possible but easy of accomplishment. 

Too, he was doggedly and hopelessly in love 
with Doris Lane. He knew she did not care for 
him. He knew she could never care for him. 
She had told him so both times he had proposed 
to her. 

But he had a strong belief that his brother 
Clive had been on the point of winning her when 
the war had separated them. He was certain 
that, in the guise of Clive, he could continue 
the wooing and bring it to a victorious end. 

But his foremost reason for the masquerade 
was that he had lost in speculation all his own 
share of the $500,000 left by their father to the 
twins and that he had managed secretly to mis¬ 
appropriate no less than $50,000 of his brother’s 
share. 

It was this shortage which decided him to go 


When He Came Home 265 

back to Aura in the dual role of both brethren, 
instead of following his first impulse and going 
as Clive alone. 

Were it known that Osmun had vanished— 
were it believed he had died—the trust com¬ 
pany which was his executor would seek to wind 
up his estate. In which case not only his own 
insolvency but his theft of the $50,000 must 
come to light. 

He trusted to time and to opportunity to 
make good this shortage and to cover its tracks 
so completely that they could not be discovered 
by officious executors or administrators. A few 
coups in the stock market would do the trick. 

But until such time he must continue to stay 
alive as Osmun. After that it would be time 
enough to get rid of his Osmun-self in some 
plausible way and to reign alone as Clive. 

Thus it was, after his return, he strove in 
every way to enhance his Clive popularity at 
the expense of Osmun. And in a measure he 
succeeded. 

But almost at once he struck a snag. 

That snag was his inability to counterfeit 
Clive’s glowingly magnetic personality. He 
could impersonate his brother in a way to baffle 


266 The Amateur Inn 

conscious detection. Yet, while outwardly he 
was Clive, he could not ape successfully Clive’s 
lovable personality. 

Folk did not warm to the supposed Clive as 
they had warmed to the real Clive. They did 
not know why. Vaguely they said to one an¬ 
other that his war-experiences had somehow 
changed him. 

They liked him because they had always liked 
him and because he did nothing overt to destroy 
that liking. But he was no longer actively be¬ 
loved. 

Most of all Osmun could see this was true 
with Doris Lane. He felt he had lost ground 
with her and that he was continuing to lose it. 
She still received him on the old friendly footing. 
But she showed no faintest sign of affection for 
him. 

Conceited as to his own powers, Osmun would 
not admit that the fault was with his impersona¬ 
tion. He attributed it wholly to the fact that 
Thaxton Vail had come back from France some 
months earlier than himself and had thus cut 
out Clive. 

Hence Osmun set his agile wits to work to get 
Vail out of his path. With Thaxton gone or 
discredited he believed his own way to Doris 


When He Came Home 267 

would be clear. He believed it absolutely and 
he laid his plans in accordance. 

Always he had hated Vail. This new compli¬ 
cation fanned his hate to something approaching 
mania. 

Sore pressed for ready cash or collateral to 
cover his stock margins and pestered to red rage 
by Thaxton’s increasing favor in Doris’s eyes, 
the chance of making public the “hotel clause” 
in Osmun Vail’s will had struck him merely as a 
minor way to annoy his enemy. 

Then, learning by chance that Doris and her 
aunt were to take advantage of the clause by 
going to Vailholme, he arranged adroitly to be 
one of the houseparty in the guise of Clive. 

At once events played into his hands. 

On inspiration he robbed the various rooms 
that first evening, while, in his role of invalid, he 
was believed to be dressing, belatedly, after his 
hours of rest. 

Purposely he had avoided molesting any of 
Vail’s belongings, that the crime might more 
easily be fixed upon the host. Creede had out¬ 
lined a score of ways whereby this might be 
done. 

There was another motive for the robbery. 
Its plunder would be of decided help in easing 


268 The Amateur Inn 

his own cash shortage. The money-plunder was 
inconsiderable. But he would have only to wait 
a little while and then pawn or sell discreetly the 
really valuable jewelry. 

The theft had been achieved without rousing 
a shadow of doubt as to his own honesty. As 
Clive, under pretense of friendship, he sought 
craftily to direct suspicion to Vail. As Osmun 
he openly voiced aloud that suspicion. It was 
well done. 

He had counted on making Doris turn in 
horror from Thaxton as a sneak thief. But he 
found to his dismay that his ruse had precisely 
the opposite effect on her. Desperate, wild with 
baffled wrath, he resolved on sweeping Vail 
forcibly and permanently from his path. 

The idea came to him when he saw, lying on 
the living-room table, the big knife which, as 
Clive, he had given to Vail. As always, Creede 
carried in his hip pocket a heavy-caliber re¬ 
volver. But pistols are noisy. Knives are not. 

Pouching the knife, as Thaxton carried his 
limp-armed body past the table on the way to 
his room, he had made ready to use it in a man¬ 
ner that could not attract suspicion to himself. 

It had been easy for him as his fingers brushed 
the table, when he was carried past it, to pick 


When He Came Home 269 

up the knife—even easier than it had been for 
him to palm the Argyle watch, a little earlier, 
and then to pretend to pull it from Vail’s pocket 
in the presence of the chief. 

As a child Creede had whiled away a long 
scarlet-fever convalescence by practicing sleight- 
of-hand tricks wherewith his nurse had sought 
to entertain him. A bit of the hard learned 
cunning had always lurked in his sensitive 
fingers. 

As he was the first to go to bed he had no 
means whatever of knowing that the man mov¬ 
ing noisily about in Vail’s adjoining room as he 
undressed was not Thaxton. 

Creede waited until the house was still. Then 
silently he crept out into the hallway and tried 
Vail’s door. It was unlocked. Barefoot, he 
crept to the bed, guided only by the dim reflec¬ 
tion of the setting moon on the gray wall oppo¬ 
site. 

By this faint light he made out the form of a 
man lying asleep on his side. Osmun struck 
with force and scientific skill. 

The sleeper started up with a gurgling cry. 
Creede, in panic, stilled the cry with a blow 
from the carafe at his hand. 

But, as he smote, an elusive flicker of moon- 


270 


The Amateur Inn 


light showed him the victim’s full face. And he 
knew his crime had been wasted. 

Terrified, yet cooler than the average man 
would have been, he caught up a shoe that his 
bare foot had brushed. Running to the window, 
he pressed it hard on the ledge, scraping off a 
blob of mud that adhered to it. Then he threw 
the curtain far to one side. Tossing the shoe 
back under the bed, he bolted for his own room. 

On the way he stopped long enough to take 
the key from the lock, insert it on the outer 
side, lock the door, pocket the key and glide 
back to his adjoining room, just as Macduff’s 
wild wolf-howl awakened the house. 

There, shivering and cursing his own stupid¬ 
ity, he crouched for a minute before venturing 
out into the hall to join the aroused guests. 

He had made it seem the murderer had en¬ 
tered and gone out through the window. He 
felt safe enough, but sick with chagrin. 

During that eternal minute of waiting he, per¬ 
force, changed his whole line of action. He had 
failed to rid himself of his foe. The only move 
left to him was to strive to fix the murder on 
Vail. And this, both as Clive and as Osmun, he 
proceeded with all his might to do. 

In telling this to Clive when they met next 


When He Came Home 271 

day at Rackrent Farm he declared passionately 
that he would have succeeded in sending Thax- 
ton to prison and perhaps to execution but for 
Miss Gregg’s inspired lie—which he accepted 
as truth—and for the item of the shoeprint on 
the window-sill. 

Checkmated at every turn and dreading to see 
any one until he could rearrange his shattered 
line of action, he went secretly to Rackrent 
Farm. He calculated that his fabrication about 
a gas-explosion in the laboratory, there, would 
prevent acquaintances from seeking him at the 
farmhouse. 

In endorsement of the gas story he already 
had given his two negro house-servants a week’s 
holiday and had had them taken by taxi to 
Pittsfield. So the coast would be clear. 

Arrived at the farm, he strayed into the labo¬ 
ratory. Chemistry and chemical experiments 
had ever been the chief amusement of the twins. 
Their laboratory was as finely equipped as that 
in many a college. They had spent money and 
time and brains on it for years. 

When the laboratory had been moved to 
Rackrent Farm from Canobie it had been set 
up in a large rear room. Here in leisure hours 
Osmun still pottered with his loved chemicals. 


272 The Amateur Inn 

And here to-day he fared; to quiet his con¬ 
fused brain by an hour or two of idle research 
work. 

Here it was that his brother Clive walked in 
on him. 

Curtly the returned twin explained his ad¬ 
vent and still more curtly he demanded to know 
the meaning of Osmun’s treatment of him. At 
a glance the horrified Osmun saw that this re¬ 
turned brother was in no mood to be cajoled or 
lied to. 

And from previous knowledge of Clive he 
chose the one possible method whereby he be¬ 
lieved he might make his peace and might even 
persuade the returned wanderer to leave the field 
to him. 

Throwing himself on his brother’s mercy, he 
told him the whole story, omitting nothing. 

For once in his twisted career Osmun Creede 
spoke the simple truth. Judiciously used, truth 
is a mighty weapon of defense, and the narrator 
had the sense to know it. In any event he saw 
it was his one chance. 

But the Clive who listened with disgusted 
amaze to the recital was not the untried and 
easy-going Clive of boyhood days, the Clive who 
had allowed himself to be dominated by his 


When He Came Home 273 

brother’s crotchety will, and who had loved 
Osmiin. 

This was an utterly new Clive—a Clive whose 
pliant nature had been stiffened by peril and 
heroism and hardship in war and by hourly over¬ 
seas contact with death and suffering. 

It was a Clive who had been betrayed by his 
brother while he lay sick and stricken and de¬ 
prived of memory. It was a Clive freed of Os- 
mun’s olden influence and fiercely resentful of 
his wrongs at his brother’s hands. 

He heard Osmun’s tale in grim silence. At 
times he winced at the tidings it gave. Oftener 
his haggard face gave no sign of emotion. 

The narrative finished, Osmun soared to 
heights of eloquence. He pointed out how 
damning to himself and to his future would be 
the reappearance of Clive in the Aura commu¬ 
nity. It would wreck Osmun in pocket and in 
repute. It might even send him to prison. 

Clive’s face as he listened was set in a stern 
white mask. 

Osmun appealed to their boyish days, to the 
memory of their honored father, and he con¬ 
jured up pictures of the disgrace that must fall 
on their father’s name should this secret become 
a local scandal. 


274 The Amateur Inn 

Clive did not speak, nor did his grim face 
change. 

Osmun painted glowing portraits of the 
wealth that was to be his as soon as his new 
Wall Street ventures should cash in. The bulk 
of this wealth he pledged to Clive if the latter 
would go to some foreign land or to the Coast 
and there await its arrival. 

Clive’s mask face at this point twitched into a 
momentary smile. The smile was neither pretty 
nor encouraging. 

Osmun, stung by his lamentable failure to re¬ 
cover any atom of his former ascendancy over 
his brother, fell to threatening. 

Again Clive’s tortured mouth relaxed into 
that unpromising smile. But again the memory 
of Doris Lane and of the impersonation whereby 
Osmun had sought to win her in his helpless 
brother’s guise banished the smile into hard re¬ 
lentlessness. Clive was seeing this worthless 
twin of his for the first time as the rest of the 
world had always seen him. 

Pushed over the verge of desperation, Osmun 
Creede saw he had but one fearsome recourse. 
If he would save his own liberty and perhaps his 
life as well—to say nothing of fortune and posi¬ 
tion—this new-returned brother must be made 


When He Came Home 275 

to vanish. Not only that, but to disappear for¬ 
ever, leaving no trace. 

Osmun must be allowed to continue playing 
his double role as before and to follow it to the 
conclusion he had planned. Anything else spelt 
certain destruction. 

Clive must be disposed of before any neigh¬ 
bor or one of the servants could drop in and dis¬ 
cover his presence. There was always an off 
chance of such intrusion. 

Whipping out the heavy-caliber revolver he 
always carried, Osmun Creede leveled it at the 
astonished Clive. 

“I’m sorry/’ he said evenly. “But I’ve got to 
do it. If I could see any other way out I’d let 
you go. But you’ve brought it on yourself. I 
can hide you in the cellar under here till night 
and then bury you with enough of the right 
chemicals to make it impossible to identify you 
if ever any one should blunder onto the grave. 
I’m sorry, Clive.” 

He spoke with no emotion at all. He felt no 
emotion. He was oddly calm in facing this one 
course open to him. 

Now Clive Creede had spent more than a 
year in war-scourged lands where human life 
was sacrificed daily in wholesale quantities and 


276 The Amateur Inn 

where death was as familiar a thing as was the 
sunlight. Like many another overseas veteran 
he had long ago lost the average man’s fear of 
a leveled firearm. 

Thus the spectacle of this pistol and of the 
coldly determined eyes behind it did not strike 
him with panic. It was a sight gruesomely fa¬ 
miliar to him from long custom. And it did not 
scatter his wits. Rather did it quicken his proc¬ 
esses of thought. 

“If you’re really set on murdering me, Oz,” 
he said, forcing his tired voice to a contemptu¬ 
ous drawl, “suppose you do the thing properly? 
For instance, why not avoid the electric chair by 
waiting till there are no witnesses?” 

As he spoke his eyes were fixed half-amusedly 
on the laboratory window directly behind his 
brother. He made a rapid little motion of one 
hand as if signaling to some one peering in at 
the window. 

It was an old trick—it had been old in the 
days when Shakespeare made use of it in de¬ 
picting the murder of the Duke of Clarence. 
But it served. Most old tricks serve. That is 
why they are “old” tricks and not dead-and- 
forgotten tricks. 

Osmun spun halfway around instinctively to 


When He Came Home 277 

get a glimpse of the imaginary intruder who 
was spying through the window upon the fra¬ 
ternal scene. 

In the same moment, with all his waning 
frail strength, Clive lurched forward and 
brought his right fist sharply down on Osmun’s 
wrist. 

The pistol flew from the killer’s jarred grasp 
and clattered to the floor. By the time it 
touched ground Clive had swooped upon it and 
snatched it up. 

Osmun, discovering the trick whereby he had 
been disarmed, grabbed at the fallen pistol at 
practically the same time. But he was a frac¬ 
tion of a second late. 

He found himself blinking at the leveled black 
muzzle of his own revolver in the hand of the 
brother he had been preparing to slay. 

Osmun recoiled in dread, springing backward 
against the laboratory wall, directly beneath a 
shelf of retorts and carboys. 

Then his terror-haunted eyes glinted as they 
rested on his brother. 

Clive’s sudden exertion and the shock of ex¬ 
citement had been too much for his enfeebled 
condition of nerve and of body. Something 
seemed to snap in his brain, and the taut spring 


278 The Amateur Inn 

that controlled his fragile body seemed to snap 
with it. 

The pistol wabbled in his nerveless grasp. He 
swayed backward, his eyes half shut. He was on 
the brink of absolute collapse. 

Osmun Creede gathered himself for a leap 
upon the half-swooning man. 

With a final vestige of perception Clive noted 
this. Summoning all he could of his lost 
strength, he sought to save his newly imperiled 
life by leveling the pistol before it should be too 
late and by pulling the trigger. 

The laboratory echoed and reechoed deafen- 
ingly to the report. And with the explosion 
sounded the multiple tinkle of falling glass. 

Clive’s bullet had had less than seven yards 
to travel. Yet it had missed his brother by at 
least two feet. It had flown high above the 
crouching Osmun’s head and had crashed 
through one of the vessels on the shelf. 

The receptacle shivered by the heavy-caliber 
ball was a huge Dewar Bulb, silvery of surface. 
In other words a double container with a vac¬ 
uum between the outer and inner glass surfaces. 
Through both layers of thick glass the bullet 
smashed its way. 

The contents of the inner bulb were thus per- 


When He Came Home 279 


mitted to burst forth and to cascade down upon 
the luckless man who was crouching for a leap 
directly below the shelf. 

These contents were liquid air. 

Among the favorite recreations of the twins 
in their laboratory had been their constant ex¬ 
periments with liquid air. They had amused 
themselves by watching it boil violently at a 
temperature of 150 degrees below zero—of see¬ 
ing it turn milk into a glowingly phosphorescent 
mass, of making it change an egg into an oval 
of brilliant blue light, an elastic rubber band 
into a brittle stick, and the like. 

Because of their constant experiments they 
always kept an unusually large quantity of the 
magic chemical in stock, the Dewar Bulb having 
been made especially for their use at quadruple 
the customary size. 

In its normal state liquid air has a mean tem¬ 
perature of 300 degrees below zero. And now 
at this temperature it bathed the man on whom 
it avalanched. 

In less than ten seconds Osmun Creede was 
not only dead but was frozen stiff. 

In through the laboratory’s open window 
gushed the torrid heat of the day, combating 
and partly quelling the miraculous chill. 


280 The Amateur Inn 

Clive had reeled backward by instinct into 
the hot passageway, shutting the laboratory 
door behind him. Too well he realized what had 
happened. The horror and the thrill of it 
seemed to dispel his dizzy weakness as a glass 
of raw spirits might have done. But, as in the 
case of the liquor, that same collapse was due to 
return with double acuteness as soon as the false 
stimulation of excitement should ebb. 

Presently he ventured back into the terrify¬ 
ingly cold space where lay the body of the man 
who had been his brother. 

His own mind still confused, Clive could think 
of but one thing to do. 

As he had approached the house he had noted 
that the bricks of the walk were so hot from 
the unshaded glare of the sun that their heat 
had struck through his thin shoe-soles and had 
all but scorched his feet. If Osmun could be 
placed out there in the sun there might be a 
chance that he would thaw to life. 

Creede was too much of a chemist to have 
imagined so idiotic a possibility in his normal 
mental state. But the shock had turned his 
reasoning faculties momentarily into those of a 
scared child. 


When He Came Home 281 


With ever-increasing difficulty he dragged his 
brother’s thin body out of the laboratory and 
out of the house onto the stretch of brick-paved 
walk. The exertion was almost too much for 
him. It used up nearly all the fictitious strength 
bred of shock. 

He stood panting over the body and striving 
not to topple to earth beside it. Then he heard 
the rattling approach of an automobile. 

Through the tangle of boxwood boughs he 
could see the car stop at the gate. In ungovern¬ 
able panic he staggered back into the house. 
There, shutting the front door softly behind 
him, he sank down on a settle in the hall, fight¬ 
ing for self-control. 

In a few minutes he had conquered the un¬ 
reasoning fright which had made him shun meet¬ 
ing any interlopers. 

He had caused the death of his brother. He 
had done it to save his own life. He was not 
ashamed. He was not sorry. He was not 
minded to slink behind closed doors when it was 
his duty as a white man to confess what he had 

done. 

Staggering again to his feet, he made for the 
front door. With all that was left of his depart- 


282 


The Amateur Inn 


ing powers he managed to open it and to reach 
the threshold-stone outside, there to confront 
his three old friends and the crazily welcoming 
collie. 

Then everything had gone black. 


Chapter XIX 

A MAN AND A MAID AND ANOTHER MAN 


‘ 'T’M just as glad Doris wasn’t here to listen 

A to this,” commented Miss Gregg, breaking 
the awed pause which followed Dr. Lawton’s 
recital. “For a perfectly innocent and kindly 
girl she seems to have stirred up no end of mis¬ 
chief. After the manner of perfectly innocent 
and kindly girls. She’d be the first to grieve 
over it, of course. But a billion Grief-Power 
never yet had the dynamic force to lift one 
ounce of any bad situation one inch in one cen¬ 
tury.” 

“Well,” said Lawton, reaching for his rusty 
black hat and his rustier black bag, “I’ve 
wasted too much time already, gabbling here. 
I must get to my miserable round of calls 
unless I want my patients to get well before I 
arrive. Good-by. Clive will be all right now. 
He has had the absolute rest he needed. He’ll 
be as good as new in another week or so. It’s 
lucky all this has happened before Oz had a 

chance to squander more than about $50,000 of 

283 


284 The Amateur Inn 

the lad’s fortune. He’ll have enough left to live 
on in comfort. To marry on, too.” 

Off plodded the old gentleman, leaving Thax- 
ton Vail scowling unhappily after him. 

“To marry on,” muttered Vail under his 
breath, not knowing he spoke aloud. 

“Yes,” chimed in Miss Gregg brightly. 
“Enough to marry on. Almost enough to be en¬ 
gaged on. He’s a lucky man!” 

“He is,” agreed Vail dully. “And a mighty 
white man, too. One of the very best.” 

“Yes,” assented Miss Gregg with fervor, 
smiling maliciously on her victim. “One of the 
very best. Doris thinks so too.” 

“I know she does,” sighed Vail. 

He got up abruptly to leave the room. But 
Miss Gregg would not have it so. 

“Thax,” she said, “you remember that would- 
be smart thing Willis Chase said, the evening of 
the burglary? He said that when a policeman 
blows out his brains and survives they make him 
a detective. Well, here’s something a hundred 
times truer: When Providence wishes to extract 
a man’s few brains more or less painlessly and to 
make him several thousand degrees worse than 
useless He makes him fall in love. That is not 
an epigram. It is better. It’s a truth. . . . 


Man, Maid and Another Man 285 

Thax, do you realize youVe been making my 
little girl very unhappy indeed?” 

“I?” blithered Vail. “Making Doris un¬ 
happy? Why, Miss Gregg, I—!” 

“Oh, don’t apologize. She enjoys it. A girl 
in love, without being divinely unhappy, would 
feel she was defrauded of Heaven’s best gift. 
Doris—” 

“But I don’t understand!” protested the mis¬ 
erable Vail. “How on earth have I made—?” 

“Principally by being mooncalfishly and ob¬ 
jectionably in love with her,” said Miss Gregg, 
“and not taking the trouble to tell her so.” 

“But how can I? In the first place, Clive 
loves her. He’s never loved any one else. 
(Neither have I for that matter. I got into the 
habit when I was a boy, and I can’t break it.) 
He’s lying sick and helpless here under my roof. 
It wouldn’t be playing the game to—” 

“Love is no more a ‘game’ than a train wreck 
is!” scoffed Miss Gregg. “If you weren’t a 
lover, and therefore a moron, you’d know that. 
It—” 

“Besides,” he blurted despairingly, “what 
would be the use? She loves him. I can tell 
she does. Why, you just said yourself she—” 
“I said she agrees with you in thinking he is 


286 The Amateur Inn 

‘one of the very best/ ” corrected Miss Gregg 
impatiently. “And it’s true. But when you get 
to my age you’ll know no woman ever loved a 
man because he was good or even because he 
was ‘best.’ She may love him for his taste in 
ties or because his hair grows prettily at the 
back of his neck or because his voice has thrilly 
little organ notes in it. Or she may love him 
for no visible reason at all. But you can take 
my word she won’t love him for his goodness. 
She’ll only respect him for it. And if I were a 
man in love I’d hate to have my sweetheart re¬ 
spect me.” 

Vail was not listening. Instead he was 
staring moodily out of the window. Turning in 
at the gates and progressing purringly up the 
drive was an electric runabout. Doris Lane was 
its sole occupant. At sight of her now, as al¬ 
ways of late, Thaxton was aware of a queer lit¬ 
tle pain at his heart. 

“Thax,” said Miss Gregg, bringing the torture 
to an abrupt end, “last evening Clive Creede 
asked Doris to marry him.” 

Vail did not answer. But between him and 
the swiftly advancing runabout sprang an an¬ 
noying mist. 


Man, Maid and Another Man 287 

Miss Gregg surveyed his averted face as best 
she might. Then her tight old lips softened. 

“Doris was very nice to him, of course,” she 
added. “But she told him she couldn’t marry 
him. She said she was in love with some one 
else—that she had always been in love with this 
stupid some one else. . . . Better go and help 
her out of the car, Thax.” 

But with a tempestuous rush and with the 
glow of all the summer winds in his face Thax- 
ton Vail already had gone. 

Miss Gregg looked after him, her hard old 
eyes curiously soft, her thin lips moving. Then 
ashamed of her unwonted weakness, she drew 
herself together with an apologetic half-smile. 

To an invisible listener she said briskly: 

“Thank Heaven, he’s outlived his useless¬ 
ness!” 


THE END 










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